To be "hopelessly convinced" by it, is perhaps the latest phase of incredulity; to be edified or enlightened by it is impossible. But, besides the advantage of being able to speak with freedom of an author like Ossian, from any natural point of view, an almost infinitely higher advantage still is to be obtained by actually verifying his text; by realising his descriptions, ascertaining his alleged facts, and localising the scenes of his narrative. Whatever is truly grand in Ossian may thus be identified with nature, if it has a counterpart there; and what seems only an imaginary outline at first may be filled up and fixed for ever as among her own still extant properties. A new sense, coherent and intelligible, may thus be imparted to the most familiar figures; and not an allusion to earth or sky, to rock or river, will be lost after such a process. Nay, a certain philosophic significance, amounting to scientific revelation, may be honestly associated with some of his loftiest figures; and what the translator himself apologises for as extravagant, may be thus converted into dreamful intuitions of hidden fact and poetic forecasting of future discoveries. Mr Arnold, in his _Celtic Literature_, seems to glance at such a capacity in Celtic man--"His sensibility gives him a peculiarly near and intimate feeling of nature, and the life of nature; here, too, he seems in a special way attracted by the secret before him, the secret of natural beauty and natural magic, and to be close to it, to half-divine it," p. 108. But Mr Arnold does not seem to include in this capacity the intuitions of natural science, at least not for Ossian; yet nothing can be more certain than that Ossian and his fellow-countrymen enjoyed them.