The Round Towers of Ireland

seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers; our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than suppress the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The sat

s instances adduced in all periods of their history, of ardent and enterprising zeal, in every case wherein personal honour or national glory may be involved, are in themselves sufficient to establish this assertion. But while granting their pre-eminence as to the possession of those feelings, and the capability of the

o round the loneliness of their present despair in the proud retrospection of their former buoyancy. This spirit it is which, despite of obvious advantages to be derived from emigration, has riveted the Irish p

nes around the

ield and genero

ag, the stream

ome proud and g

ps where patrio

indred souls to

e the soil thei

ountry, and the

f its evidences? What are those high aspiring edifices which rise with towering elevation towards the canopy of the "Most High"?[42] What are those stupendous and awful structures of another form-the study at once and admiration of the antiquarian and the philosopher, to be found on the summits of our various hills[43] as well as in the bowels[44] of the earth itself?-what are they but the historic

to us as a disgrace, which, co-extensive in its adoption with the amplitude of the earth's extension, equally characterised the illiterate and the sage; and if, amidst this lamentable prostration of the human understanding, anything like redemption or feature of superiority may be allowed, it must be, unquestionably, to the adherents of that system, which, excluding the objects of matter and clay, recognised, in its worship of the bright luminaries of the firmament, the purity and omnipotence of that Spirit who brought all into existence, and who guides and pre

of the "Towers" as I am myself satisfied with the accuracy of my conclusions. I shall only entreat, then, of their courtesy that I be not anticipated in my course, or definitively judged of by isolated scraps, but that, as my notice for this competition has been limited and recent, allowing but little time for the observance o

not more frequently excited my ridicule than my commiseration. That specimens of architecture, so costly and so elegant, should be designed for the paltry purposes of purgatorial columns or penitential heights, to which criminals should be elevated for the ablution of their enormities-while

uch their destination, a hill or rising ground would have been the proper site for the

ins and valleys is heard much farther than that of such as hang upon elevations or hills: for, air being the medium of sound, the higher the sonorous body is placed, the more rarefied is that medium, and consequently the less proper vehicle to convey the sound to a distance. The objec

, not less perceptible in their diameters and altitudes than in other characteristic bearings. For I am not to be told that those varieties we observe were nothing more than the capriciousness of taste, when I find

hat they were not erected all with one view, is the fact of our so

them together on almost the same spot? And when I mention expenditure, perhaps I may be allowed, incidentally, to observe, that, o

rport of an inscription upon one of the pyramids of Egypt, the form of some of which, be it known, was not very dissimilar to our Irish pyramids, while their intent and object were more congenial; viz. that no less a sum than 1600 talents of

n, with comparatively similar expense: and assuredly, the motive which could suggest such an outlay m

ght worthy of no better materials than temporary hurdles, and so leave behind them no vestiges of their local site,-no evidence or trace of their

ecture the stamp of a later age, having been founded by missionaries of the early Christian Church, and purposely thus collocated-contiguous to edifices long bef

of the Budhist temple of Donoghmore in Ireland, and that of Brechin in Scotland-have the deniers of the antiquity of those venerable memorials raised that super

romleachs and Mithratic caves all through the island; and that they might as well, from this vicinity, infer that those two other vestiges of heathenish adoration we

cromleach could subserve; and thus have the poor missionaries escaped the cumbrous imputation of

rder of monastic institutions with which to Siamise those temples, Montmorency has at last hit upon the noble and

cy in its proper quarter, I shall resume, f

re doomed to dwindle and moulder in decay, is it not astonishing that we find no vestiges of the like fashion, or structures of the like form

sland; and yet, in the whole compass of England, from one extremity to the other, is there

esidence of the Ostmen and Danes, there is not a si

never felt; and surely our forefathers were not so much in love with the usages and habits of their barbarian

s, is the glaring fact, that in the two cities of Wexford and Waterford-where their power was absolute, their influence

ith other characteristics, seem to have been built, after their model, at a comparatively recent period, by a colony from this country, "as if marking the fact," to use Dalton's

y, and that, without further dispute, fixes their destinat

ntemplation of their constructors, as I do, also, the universality of the very name, which I myself know, by popular converse, to be but partial in its adoption, extending only to s

and introduced its exercise into the celebration of their own ritual. By "Israelites," however, I deem it necessary to explain that I do not understand those who, in strictness of speech, are so denominated as the descendants of Israe

riests in the ministry of their religious ordinances; and to the fictitious sanctity which they attributed to this instrument ma

th the spirit of their divine mission. I shall hereafter relate the astonishment excited in England, at the appearance of one of those bells, brought there in the beginning of the sixth century by Gildas, who had just returned after finishing his education in Ireland; and this, in i

e enough for a single bell of a moderate size to swing about in it; that, from the whole of their form and dimensions, and from the smallness of the apertures in them, they are rather calculated to stifle than to transmit to a distance any sound t

to content myself with the mere exposure of the fallacy, without following it up with proofs, which must evermore, I trust, encumber its advocates with shame; and the rather, as this great champion of Danish civilisation and proclaimer of his country's barbarism is at no ordinary trouble to affec

ew of them, after all, was not far from being correct; and the laborious industry with which he prosecuted his inquiries, and the disinterested warmt

ell of the belfry hypothesis, I think I could not do better now than give Ledw

her hollow-the one square, and the other circular: the ascetic there was placed without on the pillar; with us enclosed in the tower. He adds, these habitations of anchorites were called inclusoria, or arcti inclusorii ergastula, but these were very different from our round towers; for he mistakes Raderus, on

e of these towers of Clonmacnois he was enclosed.' It must have been the strangest perversion of words and ideas to have attempted it. Is it not astonishing that

number within his closing denunciation, he should have waited until he had seen a note appended to the fourteenth of Dr.

fth century, applied for religious instruction, when a youth, to a holy solitary by name Imarus, who w

I am forced, however reluctant, to notice the conjecture, which others have hazarded, of those Round Towers having been places of retreat and se

he case; because, while the "castella" have vanished, the Round Towers-which never belonged to them-do, many of them still firmly, maintain their post; and as to the latter