The Rev. Robert Walsh was then curate of Finglas, and this mysterious history having reached his ears, he determined forthwith to ascertain its evidences. His first step was to see the chronicler himself.--This personage’s name was Jack White. Jack, who was himself well stricken in years, told him that he had learned, a long while ago, from his father, who was then himself rather elderly, that he had been shown by his still older grandfather the identical spot where the cross had been concealed, and could point it out now to anyone with certainty and preciseness. The proposal was accepted; workmen were employed; and, after considerable perseverance, the cross was _exhumed_, its parts _reunited_ by iron cramps, and _re-erected_, as opposite, within a short distance of the scene of its subterranean slumbers, as if in renascent triumph over the destroyer! “Let such approach this consecrated land And pass in peace along the magic waste: But spare its relics--let no busy hand Deface the scene, already how defaced! Not for such purpose were those altars placed: Revere the remnants nations once revered; So may our country’s name be undisgraced, So may’st thou prosper where thy youth was reared, By every honest joy of love and life endeared.”[420] CHAPTER XXVI. It will be borne in mind that everything hitherto advanced on the various topics which we have been discussing, was the sheer result of internal reasoning and of personal circumspection--that, wherever extrinsic aid was brought forward in support of this unbeaten track, it was uniformly in the shape of _conclusions_ deduced from the premises of reluctant witnesses. I rejoice, with delight unspeakable, that I have it at last in my power to range myself side by side with an author whose testimony in this matter must be considered decisive, but which, however, by some strange aberration of intellect, has never before been understood! Cormac,[421] the celebrated bishop of Cashel, and one of the first scholars who ever flourished in any country, when defining the Round Towers in his _Glossary of the Irish Language_, under the name of _Gaill_[422] says, that they were “_Cartha cloacha is aire bearor gall desucder Fo bith ro ceata suighedseat en Eire_,”--that is, stone-built monuments within which noble judges used to enclose vases containing the relics of Fo (_i.e._ Buddh), and of which they had erected hundreds throughout Ireland! Knowing that the Ceylonese _Dagobs_, a name which literally signifies _houses of relics_, were appurtenances of Budhism, I intreated of a very intelligent native of that island, who attended the Vihara, at Exeter Hall, some time ago, that he would favour me with a written outline of his views of those structures. After a few days, he very civilly obliged me with the following:--