The history of prehistoric Ireland as told in ancient chronicles, easily proves the Irish to be the oldest nation in Europe, mingling their story with those not alone of Egypt, Troy, Greece, and Rome, but with that of Noah and the antediluvian world. Who was the Lady Caesair, who fled with her household to Ireland from the coming deluge after being refused shelter by Noah? and who Nemehd, the next colonist from the East, who heads the royal procession of one hundred and eighteen kings? and who, above all, is Milesius, who comes fresh from the lingual disaster at Shinar, the divinely appointed ruler, bringing with him his Egyptian wife Scota (Pharaoh's daughter) and her son Gael? and who that other son Heber, whose name was given to the original _lingua humana_ (the Hebrew), in honor of his efforts to prevent the blasphemous building of {200} Babel? For what do these shadowy figures stand, looming out of formless mist and chaos, and bestowing their names as imperishable memorials?--Scotia, Scots, Gaelic,--the word Gaelic in its true significance including Ireland and Scotland. Even the name Fenian takes on a venerable dignity when we learn that Fenius, the Scythian King, and father of Milesius, established the first university--a sort of school of languages--for the study of the seventy-two new varieties of human speech, appointing seventy-two wise men to master this new and troublesome branch of human knowledge! We are told that Heber and Heremon, the sons of Milesius, finally divided the island between them, and then, after the fashion of Romulus, Heber drove the factious Heremon over the sea into the land of the Picts, and reigned alone over the Scots in Ireland. The sober truth seems to be that Ireland, at a very early period, was known to the Greeks as Ierne (from which comes Erin), and later to the Romans as Hibernia. At a very remote time it seems to have been colonized by Greek and other Eastern peoples, who left a deep impress upon the Celtic race {201} already inhabiting the island; but an impress upon the mind, not the life, of the Celts, for no vestige of Greek or other civilization, except in language and in ideals, has ever been found in Ireland. The only archaeological remains are cromlechs, which tell of a Druidical worship, and the round towers, belonging to a much later period, whose purpose is only conjectured.