376 



more needed, how welcome would it be, at a moment like the present, 

 when parties long divided should be taught the mutual errors that 

 hitherto estranged them, and feel at length how deeply it is their 

 interest to cooperate in the enjoyment and diffusion of those blessings, 

 which would then be the spontaneous result of a gifted country, a 

 line people, and a glorious constitution. 



I feel proudly confident that I have myself contributed much to 

 what was hithert oconsidered a hopeless undertaking, a history of Ire- 

 land in the ages that precede all official records, and I will not suppress 

 from the well wishers of the cause the full force of the example. I too 

 was once a heretic to the grandeur of ancient Ireland, but the con- 

 victions of time and research have made me as orthodox a believer as 

 the most enthusiastic of them could reasonably desire ; and although 

 I have myself the most valuable collections for the history of Ireland 

 from the period of the English invasion, as well as for the historic 

 illustration of its topography and ecclesiastical remains, I yet com- 

 menced this Work with rash apprehensions that I should encounter 

 a sad scarcity of authentic materials for any accounts anterior to 

 that event. So much, however, did I miscalculate, that I have been 

 obliged to circumscribe even this long Essay within the means of my 

 subject and the evidences of my research. Yet my period and my 

 illustrations were prescribed : how much more satisfactorily would the 

 question have been elucidated, if the weight of internal evidence had 

 been superadded. 



I have given but the outline of an extensive landscape, it 

 remains for others to fill the picture, and give it life and co- 

 louring ; to illustrate that high antiquity which links itself with 

 Egypt,* — the country of Thebes, Sesostris, and the Pyramids ; with 

 Phoenicia* and the merchants of the world ; with Persia, and the coni- 



• Ante, pp. 15, et seq. and p. 97. 



