Doubtless the reader has been highly edified by this Britannic dissertation! He is, I am sure, as thorough master of the subject, now, as Mr. Whittaker himself!--can tell how many fractures, cross-lines, and diagonals have been made upon _Britain_ ever since Noah’s _flood_! And as he cannot fail, in consequence, being in love with the Reverend Author, I will indulge his fondness by another _spark_ of enlightenment. “At this period,” he resumes (three hundred years before Christ), “many of the natives relinquishing their ancient seats to the Belgæ, found all the central and northern parts of England already occupied, and transported themselves into _the uninhabited isle_ of Ireland!” I will now be understood as to the promise made some while ago,[477] in reference to a definition for the word _modern_. A _modern_ then, be it known, _is a philosopher_ (?), who fancies that _until three hundred years before Christ, the whole world was in darkness! physical as well as metaphysical! that it was even in a great measure uninhabited! by other than the brute creation!--but that suddenly when ever any mighty feat was to be achieved_ (in other words, whenever a modern theory was to be bolstered up) _innumerable myrmidons armed cap-à-pié! full accoutred, booted and spurred! used to gush forth from some obscure corner of the earth!_ A miracle of production, to which even _Cadmus’s soldiers_ can bear no parallel; for while the latter are located to a particular _place_, and stated to have been generated by regular _seed_, even though that was nothing more than a _tooth_ of a _dragon_,[478] the former burst forward, nobody knows _whence_, nor will their _machiners_ condescend to tell even so much as what may have been the _elements_ of their composition! To whom, however, is Mr. Whittaker beholden for this intellectual idea? Verily, to a half-senseless poor friar,[479] a few centuries deceased, who was no more competent--and no blame to him from his resources--to analyse this question, than he was to stop the revolutions of the celestial orbs! Yet _jejune_ and abortive as were Cirencester’s cerebral conceptions, he was not less dogmatic in the utterance of them than was his imitator. “_It is most certain_,” says he, “that the Damnii, Voluntii, Brigantes, Cangi, and other nations, were descended from the Britons, and passed over thither after Divitiacus, or Claudius, or Ostorius, or other victorious generals had invaded their original countries. Lastly, the ancient language, which resembles the old British and Gallic tongues, affords another argument, as is well known to persons skilled in both languages.”