It will readily be believed, that descriptions so mysterious, relating to events so momentous, must have attracted the observation of subsequent years. Generation after generation gazed upon them with wonder! Generation after generation spoke their ignorance in wonder! Mr. Ledwich, of course, must have a snap at them: and it would make a _cat_ laugh, or Plutarch’s _boar_ dance a hornpipe, to hear the contortions of history, the violations of nature, the perversions of fact, of date, and of philosophy, which this _blot_ upon letters has strung together into a melange, as if an exposition of the above hieroglyphics! And yet, this is he who boasts of his having been “_not sparing of ridicule_” in those moments which he tells us, “he could steal from _clerical_ and domestic avocations,”--to tell lies of his country! The speculation took, however, and he was fostered in his malice--riches and honours were showered upon him! Well, he died--a monitory pause accompanies the sound--but the party must have a successor! They “have found him” amongst themselves!--the author of the _Fine Arts in Ireland_! This _fine_ gentleman has really exhibited some degree of _tact_, which shows him not unworthy of his appointment. He begins by denouncing, hoof and horn, every position of his predecessor! Calls him, as a salvo, “a learned man!” but insists upon his being a “most unskilful antiquary”; and though “dogmatic,” “altogether a visionary.” These, you would suppose, were great liberties to take with the foster-child of patronage. They were so, in _appearance_, not _in reality_, for “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur”-- he is a _modern_,[386] and though of a different _school_, it suits their purpose as well. But let us see how he would decipher “the writing upon the wall.” “If we might venture a _conjecture_,” he says, “it would be that the living figures represent the most distinguished native princes, who warred with the adventurers in defence of their country; and that those of the deceased kings were the patriot monarchs of earlier times!” Pray, _what_ adventurers? _what_?--But the farce is too absurd to bestow discussion upon it. Come, however, to the _crucifixion scene_, what would “P----” make of this? “This _appears_,” he says, “to represent the death of the young son of Dermod MacMurrough, who was delivered up to Roderick O’Connor, as a hostage for his father’s fidelity, and who, according to Cambrensis, and, we _believe_, to our own annalists, was abandoned by that inhuman and ambitious parent to his fate!” After the flourish of trumpets, with which Mr. P---- had proclaimed _independence_ of Dr. Ledwich, one would have expected a _new_ ascription, or, at least, a _different_ one, from him. This, however, is but a _servile transcript from his predecessor’s work_, and that, too, without having the candour to quote him as his authority! “But let us view those things with closer eyes.”