Have we not here the solution of that general disbelief which attaches to proofs deduced from etymology? It is so in all professions, when quacks break into the fold, and usurp the office of the legitimate practitioner. Etymology, in itself, is an exalted _science_, and an _unerring standard_; but the mountebanks that have intermeddled with her holy tools, and disjointed the symmetry of her fair proportions, knowing no more of the _foundation_ of _languages_ than they do of the _origin_ of _spirit_, have sunk it into a _pandemonium_ of _hackling_, _mangling_, and _laceration_, at which “the satirist,” perhaps, may laugh, but “the philosopher,” who has any regard for the right thinking of society, and the implanting in the tender mind a correct idea of words, at a moment when impressions are so wrought as to be _ineffaceable_, will feel differently on the subject; and, if he cannot _reform_, do all that he can to _expose_ it! How opposite has been the conduct of the learned Abbé MacGeoghegan as to the origin of this abstruse word! After reviewing in his able work[129] the opinions offered by the several persons who wrote before him upon the question, and none of them giving him satisfaction, he freely acknowledges, when unable to supply the deficiency, that “the derivation of this name is unknown.” He was right; but the spell is at last broken. As a sequel to this avowal, I must be allowed to quote at full length the extract from Avienus,[130] which has been already referred to-- “Ast hinc, duobus in _Sacram_--sic _Insulam_ Dixere _prisci_--solibus cursus rati est; Hæc inter undas multum cespitem jacit; Eamque latè gens _Hibernorum_ colit, Propinqua rursus insula Albionum patet,”-- that is, two days’ sail will take you thence (from the Sorlings) to the _Sacred Island_; as so denominated by the _men of old_. A rich gleby soil distinguishes this favourite of the waters; and the race of the _Hibernians_ cultivate it in its wide extent. Close by, again, is situated the isle of the Albiones. Without dwelling upon the importance which he attaches to this “Sacred Island,” while he disposes of England in one single line, I ask any person at all conversant with letters, whether it was as a vernacular epithet, or not rather in compliance with his _hexameters_ and the rules of metrical versification, which rendered inconvenient the exhibition of the _name itself_ that the poet paraphrased its meaning, and gave _insula sacra_ as its equivalent? Is not the country inhabited by the Gauls called Gallia; that occupied by the Britons, Britannia; that possessed by the Indians, India; that peopled by the Germans, Germania; and that tenanted by the Arcadians, Arcadia? Consequently, the land inhabited by the people styled _Hibernians_ must, by universal analogy, be denominated _Hibernia_. And if this signifies “Sacred Island,” of course “Hibernian” must mean “an inhabitant of the Sacred Island.”