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of literature. Ireland never experienced Roman subjugation; and 
the northern barbarians assailed her not, until the period of her 
highest advancement in Christianity. Thus her pagan records es- 
caped, ina great measure, the military ravages, which had proved 
so ruinous to the other nations of Europe. They did not, however, 
entirely escape the warm zeal of our first Christian missionaries and 
converts; neither could they have altogether resisted the consuming 
inroads of a long series of centuries, more especially as they had 
been singularly and unfortunately denied the powerful restoratives of 
the printer’s art and critic’s labour. Yet, among all the wesiern 
nations, Ireland is without parallel in the preservation of authentic 
records of remote antiquity. This preeminence may be ascribed to 
her sequestered situation ; her long exemption from foreign subju- 
gation; and, above all, her incomparable institutions and legal 
provisions in favour of literature and its professors. ‘“ Perhaps 
Ireland,” says Dr. Warner, “is the only country, which ever made 
history and the Jearned professions a national cause of the utmost 
importance to the state.”* 
It is therefore not surprising, that learned men, while treating 
on British and Celtic antiquities, without any knowledge of those 
of Ireland, have dealt in vague and groundless conjectures, instead 
of instructive facts of history—in strained and unedifying deductions 
from a few Greek and Roman fragments, instead of primitive and 
substantial domestic documents. ‘“ Without the knowledge of the 
Irish language and books,” says Toland, “ the Gallic antiquities, not 
meaning the Francic, can never be set in any tolerable light, with 
regard either to words or to things.’-+ The philosophic Leibnitz 
voL. XIV. P 
* Introd. to the Hist. of Ireland, p- 50. 
+ Hist. of the Druids, oct. Edinburgh, 1815, p. 70. 
