Fuller, in his account of the Crusade, conducted by Godfrey of Boulogne, says, “Yea, we might well think that all the concerts of Christendom in this war would have made no music if the _Irish harp_ had been wanting.” And _this_ is the instrument which Ledwich asserts we borrowed from the Ostmen! Insolent presumption! Neither Ostman nor Dane ever laid eyes upon such, until they saw it in the _sunny_ valleys of the Emerald Island. And had they the shadow of a claim either to it or to the Round Towers, to which its services were consecrated, Cambrensis could not fail ascertaining the fact from any of the stragglers of those uncouth marauders, who--having survived the carnage inflicted upon their army, in the plains of Clontarf, under the retributive auspices of the immortal Brien--were allowed to cultivate their mercantile avocations in the various maritime cities, where they would naturally be proud to perpetuate every iota of demonstrative civilisation which they could pretend to have imported. Alas! they _imparted_ none, but _exported_ a great deal; and, what is more to be lamented, annihilated its evidences! But it is not alone of the _property_ of this national organ that the _moderns_ would deprive us, but the very _existence_ of the instrument they affirm to be of recent date! Why, sir, it is as old as the hills. Open the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, and you will find it there recorded that “Jubal was the father of all such as handle the _harp_ and organ.” And now to the empirics of the “Fine Arts,”[455] and the deniers of their antiquity, I shall quote the next verse, namely, “Zillah, she also bare a son, Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”[456] And in Job xxviii. 2 it is said that “iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.” “In the _north of Europe_,” says Herodotus, “there appears to be by far the greatest abundance of gold; where it is found I cannot say, except that _the Arimaspians, a race of men having only one eye_, are said to purloin it from the griffins.[457] I do not, however, believe that there exists any race of men born with only one eye!” Had this esteemed author known the allegorical import of the word Arimaspians (from _arima_, one, and _spia_, an eye), such as it has been explained at page 86, he would not have committed himself by the observation with which the above extract has terminated. No doubt he thought it extremely _philosophical_, because it is _sceptical_! but let us see if another instance of his _scepticism_ will redound more to his _philosophy_:--“I cannot help laughing,” says he elsewhere, “at those who pretend that the ocean flows round our continent: no proof can be given of it.... I believe that Homer had taken what he believes about the ocean from a work of antiquity, but it was without comprehending anything of the matter, repeating what he had read, without well understanding what he had read!”[458]