Hence it is that though we occasionally meet with _Iran_, as applied to this country, yet do we more frequently find _Irin_ as its distinctive term; whereas the latter is never, by any chance, assigned to Persia, the former alone being its universal name. And this is all conformable to the closest logical argumentation, which teaches that every species is contained in its genus, but that no genus is contained in its species; _Irin_, therefore, which is the specific term, may also be called _Iran_ the generic, while _Iran_--except as in _our_ instance, where the _extension_ of both is identical--could never be called _Irin_: and so it happens that _Ireland_ is indifferently called by the names of _Iran_ or _Irin_, the latter alone marking its _insular_ characteristic; whereas _Persia_, not being so circumstanced, is mentioned only by the general form of _Iran_. To simplify this reasoning I must repeat that _Iran_[147] signifies the _Sacred Land_, and _Irin_,[148] the _Sacred Island_; now every _island_ is a _land_, but every _land_ is not an island: Persia, therefore, which is _not an island_, could not be called _Irin_, whereas Ireland, _which is_, may as well be called one as the other.[149] _Irin_, then, is the _true_, _appropriate_, _characteristic_ and _specific_ denomination belonging to this island:--and the words Ire, Eri, Ere,[150] and Erin, applied also thereto, are but vicious or dialectal modifications of this grand, original, and ramifying root. The import of this appellative having spread itself over the globe before Rome was ever known, under that name, as a city, and when Greece was but just beginning to peep into the light, the Pelasgi--who were partly Budhists, allied somewhat to them in religion, and still more akin in birth and endowments--conveyed, in conjunction with the Phœnician merchants, to the early Greek inhabitants;[151] and they, by a very easy process, commuted _Irin_ to _Iérne_, which is but a translation of the word--ἱερος signifying _sacred_, and νηος an island. Of this Greek form, Ierne, there were again various inflections and depraved assimilations, such as Iernis, Iuernia, Ouvernia, Vernia, etc. And from one[152] of those, the Latins, without, perhaps, exactly knowing what it meant, conjured up _Hibernia_, but which, however, with soul-stirring triumph, retains _uninjured_ our original root, the initial _H_ being nothing more than the aspirate of the Greek ἱερος, sacred; νηος, _island_, remaining unaltered; and the letter _b_ only interposed for sound-sake.[153] So that, whether we consider it as _Irin_, _Ierne_, or _Hibernia_, or under the multiplied variations which diverge, almost interminably, from those _three originals_, in the several languages which they _respectively_ represent, they will be found, each and all, to resolve themselves into this _one, great, incontrovertible position of the_ “Sacred Island.”