452 
of Irish origin that they owed their first acquaintance with 
the Gospel of Peace! In both countries are still to be found 
many memorials of aboriginal times, which had once their 
resemblances in England, but which have there disappeared 
under ‘‘ the tramplings of three conquests,” and the march 
of modern improvement. I refer, particularly, to those re- 
mote times when Druidism bore its mystic sway. Its usages 
yet linger in customs of popular superstition, although obli- 
vion has long since failen on the meaning attached to them by 
a crafty, powerful, and domineering hierarchy. Many an age 
has passed since its oracles became dumb ; but the nomencla- 
ture of its religious creed is still employed to express, by the 
unwitting Gael of the present day, some of the mysteries of 
his purer faith! We have still the mysterious “‘ temple,” with 
its massive ‘ cromlech,” the poetry of the solitary moor, and 
seldom-trodden height,—many of which have been protected 
by our landed proprietors, with commendable feeling, disre- 
garding not the protest against eviction of those adscripta 
glebe, and refusing to abandon to 
‘ Hands more rude than wintry winds,’ 
relics which have braved the buffetings of countless storms.” 
Mr. Petrie remarked, that he thought the Academy 
should feel great pleasure at every effort made by the Scottish 
antiquarians to illustrate their antiquities, which were so 
intimately connected with those of Ireland; and that they 
should be grateful to Mr. Ramsay for communicating to their 
Institution his very ingenious attempt to decipher and ex- 
plain the remarkable inscription at St. Vigean’s. 
Mr. Petrie regretted, however, being obliged to state, that 
he could not, by any means, concur either in Mr. Ramsay’s 
reading of this inscription, or his conclusions as to its age. 
He did not believe that there were any abbreviations of words, 
or varieties of language or alphabetic writing, in it, such as 
