But Ireland, thank God, is rescued from the drivelling of such dotards. It will hold its place now amongst the nations of the earth; and the result is inevitable, however tardy your compliance, but that the truth will be _revived_ from one pole of the universe to the other, that, in the primeval world, all sanctity and all happiness had here fixed their abode, that heaven was here personified, and that the irradiating focus of all moral enlightenment was here alone to be found.[382] Look, Sir, what do you see before you? The solution of that all-healing _arrow_ which Abaris was said to have brought with him from the island of the Hyperboreans, on his visit of religion to Greece! Should you ever chance to travel as far as the county of Galway, inquire for the deserted village of Knockmoy. Though now dreary, inconsiderable, and forgotten, it was once the theatre of soul-stirring impressions! [Illustration] There in the remnant of an ancient Tuath-de-danaan Temple, vaulted with stone, and transformed, in after ages, to a Christian Abbey, you will find, after a succession of, at least, three thousand revolving years, this pathetic representation of the _youth Apollo slaying with his arrow the serpent Python_[383]--in other words, _overthrowing, by self-endurance, the dominion of sin! and, finally, by immolation upon a tree_, to which you perceive him pinioned, _establishing ascendency over the serpent and his wiles_, and pointing out the road to eternity beyond the grave! [Illustration] In an upper range, on the same compartment, you can trace this other line, consisting of three kings with their eastern _crowns_, their eastern _costume_, and the _dove_ of amity entwining all of them as they superintend the spectacle, while the solemnity of the whole is enhanced by the composure with which a Brehon sits by, in his turban of state, after reading from the _Bana_, or the Budhist gospel, the sentence of condemnation and of mysterious expiation, in one and the same breath. “He was oppressed and He was afflicted; yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before His shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.”[384] But this is not the only incident which this treasure of antiquity pourtrays. Beside the three monarchs are skeleton delineations of the _three_ other divinities, who, before this _fourth_, assumed the form of humanity, and went through the same ordeal of atoning passion to reclaim our species, through ages back in the distance![385]