jestic edifice, once the proud seat of imperial grandeur, after a 

 lapse of time and change of circumstances, deserted, decayed and 

 doomed to shelter the humble peasant or the shepherd's care. The 

 sublime and lofty halls, pinnacles and towers, splendid but melan- 

 choly monuments of former magnificence, remain to exercise the 

 talents of antiquarian learning and excite the admiration of ages. 

 Such at the present day, is the language of Ireland. But after 

 braving a thousand storms, it yet remains unimpaired and so will 

 continue, monumentum are perennius.* This venerable fabric is the 

 subject of our present consideration. We shall now proceed to 

 consider its various parts, and in doing so, it will appear how far 

 we are qualified for the attempt. 



The Irish language, as before observed, contains within it the 

 radices of the ancient Celtic. The affinities between the latter and 

 the dialects derived from it can be better traced in the Irish than 

 in any of the other existing branches of that great stock. The 

 knowledge of it alone would yield more materials for a system of Ety- 

 mology than any other language, the Hebrew excepted, and even 

 more than we can be supplied with by all the laborious researches 

 of etymologists put together, notwithstanding their having paid the 

 most unremitting attention to the subject. Several classes of words 

 in most of the Oriental languages bear visible marks of being derived 

 from the same common parent as the Irish. Many of the northern 

 languages have originated from the same source. If etymologies wer^ 



• It is now ascertained that the Irish language is spoken in the interior of many of the West 

 Indian Islands, in some of which it may be said to be almost vernacular. This curious fact is sa- 

 tisfactorily explained by documents in the possession of my respected friend, James Hardiman, 

 Esq., author of the History of Galway. After the reduction of Ireland by Cromwell and his 

 myrmidons, the thousands who were " shipped to the Carribbes" so these islands, were then 

 called, " and sold as slaves," carried with them their language. That they preserved, and there 

 it remains to this day. 



