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fectly obvious ;—it is, that the Druids and early inhabitants of those 
islands, as well as of the continent, had the use of letters, literarum 
secreta. Cesar so testifies for the Celts of Gaul—as Strabo has 
done for those of Spain, with their written poems and pedigrees 
6000 years old.* The ancient colonists of Britain and Ireland di- 
rectly came over from Gaul and Spain, and must have imported the 
learning and religion of the parent countries. To suppose the con- 
trary would be an absurdity of the grossest kind; equally opposed 
by positive evidence, by the analogy of things, by the history of na- 
tions, and by common sense. ‘That the Pagan Irish had the use of 
letters is demonstrated, beyond all question, by their existing annals, 
their ancient alphabet, their astronomical acquirements, their system 
of chronology, their immemorial veneration and legal provisions for 
learning, and by the internal and convincing evidence of the cha- 
racter and constitution of their priesthood. When I talk of letters 
in pagan times, I do not, of course, mean the modern abgiter, or 
alphabet, employed by our Christian annalists, and introduced into 
this island with the Christian faith. I mean the primitive and uni- 
versal characters, brought by the Pheenicians to Greece, and to their 
several colonies throughout the west. The Gauls, according to 
Pliny, used the Tonic letters; who also says, that the Latins and 
Greeks anciently employed one common character, as is proved from 
the table written in Rome by Nausicratas the Athenian. Herodotus 
testifies, that, in his time, the Ionic and Phoenician letters were the 
same, as were originally the Phoenician and Hebrew. + It is to 
this universal source we have a right to trace the early use of letters 
in the Britannic Isles, visited, as they had been, by the Phcenicians, 
the civilizers of the barbarians of Europe. Of the incursions into 
* Lib, 3, nova Edit. Oxon, t.1.p. 152. 
+ Postellus De Foenicum Literis, apud Havercamp, v. 2. 
