209 



much time is necessarily required to encourage and confirm it, and 

 more especially so in those early ages when rapidity of communica- 

 tion was unknown. It has been proved by Lord Rosse, in his Defence 

 of the Ancient History of Ireland, that the Phenicians and Cartha- 

 ginians carried on much trade with the British Islands for lead and 

 tin, in the time of Herodotus, 500 years before Christ. During 

 the course of those five hundred years the arts, the manners, and the 

 religion of this country, were gradually imported and nationalized. 

 But taking the landing of Julius Caesar in Britain, in the year 55, 

 before Chrst, as a fixed point of time, and counting back fifty years 

 from that, we shall be brought to about an hundred years before 

 the Christian era, at which time the introduction of the improve- 

 ments and innovations of Zoroaster, and that also of fire-towers, 

 may, without straining probability, be supposed to have fully taken 

 place. That it was not much earlier may be inferred from the 

 before-mentioned ordinance of the year 79, A. D., to increase the 

 number of the towers in the different provinces. The tower-build- 

 ing period may therefore have extended from about the year 100 

 before Christ, though perhaps five centuries, or until some time 

 after the ssra of St. Patrick, A. D. 434, when Christianity was suf- 

 ficiently established in the island, to put a stop to the practice of 

 raising these pyramidal towers, although the idolatry of the sun, 

 was partially followed so late as when Bede wrote in the eighth cen- 

 tury. Persia continued to worship both the sun and fire to a much 

 later date,* and in her remote provinces, notwithstanding Ma- 

 hommedan tyranny, numbers of Ghebres still exist. 



* The Mahomedan geographer Ebn Haukal, who travelled in the tenth century, declares, 

 that fire-worship at that time prevailed so greatly, that " there was no district or town of Fars 

 without a fire-temple." — Travels in the East, III. p. 357. 



V0I« XV. BE 



