The rigour, however, of penal observances began, in time, gradually to relax; and the people ventured to confess that they had still in their possession such things as _manuscripts_, illustrative of their lineage and ancestral elevation. This was the signal to some liberal individuals to prosecute an inquiry for additional memorials; and the result was, that they rose from the pursuit, if not with a _connected aggregate of demonstrational evidence_, at least with a _conviction_ on their _minds_, that those treasured visions of primeval lustre, hereditary and inborn within the breast of every Irishman, and impossible to be eradicated, were not yet, _late as was the hour_, without something like a basis to rest upon. I would be unjust did I not furthermore avow, that it was not their enemies alone that waged this ungenerous warfare with the literature of the Irish. St. Patrick himself was the individual who, in pursuance, as he conceived, of his apostolic charge, may be said to have perpetrated the greatest outrage upon our antiquities; having set fire, in a paroxysm of pious zeal, to no less than _one hundred and eighty volumes_, which he selected from the great mass of the records of the nation, as embodying the tenets of _Budhism_ and _Astrology_. The rest, relating to the notification of national or personal achievements, he left untouched and secure. Yet, will it be believed that this was the severest infliction, so far as _letters_ are concerned, which we have sustained, after all? For as the _religion_ of the ancient Irish was intermingled with their _history_, and as the wide diffusion of their _celebrity_ arose from the eminence of their _religious creed_, the flames of that conflagration have inflicted a loss upon the antiquarian which _fifteen centuries of study_ have not been able to repair! Despite, however, the united inroads of suspicion and mistaken piety, the Irish have still materials, ample and authentic, for the completion of a history, not only of _insular_, but, if _properly handled_, of almost _universal_ elucidation:[165] and of this Toland himself was, in some measure, aware, when he said that “notwithstanding the long state of barbarity in which that nation hath lain, and after all the rebellions and wars with which the kingdom has been harassed, they (the Irish) have _incomparably_ more ancient materials of that kind for their history, to which even their _mythology is not unserviceable_, than either the English, or the French, or any other European nation with whose ancient manuscripts I have any acquaintance.”