In No. 333 of the MIRROR, there is an article on the ancient _round towers_ in Scotland and Ireland, in which it is stated that the said towers "have puzzled all antiquarians," that they are now generally called _fire towers_ and that "_they certainly were not belfries_." I have often thought that antiquarians, and particularly our modern Irish antiquarians, have affected to be puzzled about what, to the rest of mankind, must appear to be evident enough; and this for the purpose of making a parade of their learning, and of astonishing the common reader by the ingenuity of their speculations. I think I shall be able to show, that a motive of this kind must have operated in the case of these _round towers_, otherwise "all the antiquarians" could not have been so sadly puzzled about what to the rest of the world appears a very plain matter. The fact is, that when St. Patrick planted the Christian faith in Ireland, in the middle of the fifth century, (he died A.D. 492,) the practice of hanging bells in church steeples had not begun; and we know from history, that they were first used to summon the people to worship in A.D. 551, by a bishop of Campania; the churches, therefore, that were erected by St. Patrick, (and he built many,) were originally without belfries; and when the use of bells became common, it was judged more expedient to erect _a belfry detached from the church_, than by sticking it up against the side or end walls, to mar the proportions of the original building. This is the account of the matter given by the old Irish historians, not one of whom appears to have been aware what "puzzlers" these _round towers_ were to become in after ages; and in a life of St. Kevin, of Glendaloch, (co. Wicklow,) who died A.D. 628, we are told that "the holy bishop did," a short time before his death, "erect a _bell-house_ (cloig-theach) contiguous to the church _formerly_ erected by him, in which he placed _a bell_, to the glory of God, and for the good of his own soul." I am not unaware, in giving you the above quotation, that "all the antiquarians," and particularly those of Scotland, have long since decided, that in every matter connected with the ancient history of Ireland, her native historians (many of whom were eye-witnesses of the facts they relate) are on no account to be credited; and that the safest way of dealing with those chroniclers is, in every thing, to take for granted exactly the reverse of what they may at any time assert. In deference, therefore, to such high authorities, I shall waive any advantage which I might claim on account of a quotation from the works of a _native historian_, and proceed to show, from the reasonableness of the thing itself, that those towers which you state "were certainly never belfries," were in fact belfries, and were never any thing else. _First_.--They are all situated within a few yards of _some ancient church_, and which church is invariably _without a steeple_.