In truth, the island was altogether an _Oriental Asylum_,[507] until, for a moment broken in upon by the Fir-Bolgs, or Celts. Their usurpation, however, was only that of a day, amounting, by all records, but to fifty-six years;[508] after which, a new army of the Tuath-de-danaans, driven now, not from Persia, but from India, by the Brahmins, laid claim to the sceptre to which their brethren had invited them, and reinstated themselves afresh in our kindred Iran. It is not, therefore, you perceive, our individual history alone that is rectified by this investigation. It supplies a vacuum in the history of the world: which could not be said to have been correct, _so long as there was nothing known on the various topics now explained_.[509] Professor Müller,[510] in a very elaborate treatise upon the _Antiquities of the Dorians_, has been pleased to affect astonishment, through one of his notes, that Hecatæus should have believed in the existence of the Hyperboreans! It became him, unquestionably, so to do, because that the proofs of their existence were beyond his own reach. But though their _reality_, as well as _locality_, have been already put beyond disputation, I will, to justify the exclusiveness here proclaimed, enter again upon the subject, and, without following in detail, show, by the reverse of his positions, that his whole system of mythology is equally erroneous. In this determination I will of course be acquitted of any intentional slight. Who could read Professor Müller’s work, and not be struck with the labour and the ingenuity which distinguish its every page? I yield to no man in my respect for his abilities, but I weep, from my soul, that his classic care was not bequeathed upon some other subject, rather than be split upon a rock by an _ignis fatuus_. I never saw such a waste of letters as his book exhibits! I never saw such learned research so miserably thrown away! And how could it be otherwise, his great object having been to make everything square to the reveries of the Grecians!--taking them as his clue, into a labyrinth of inextricability, through one inch of which neither conductor nor traveller could see their way! Sweet _pahlavi_ of the Hyperboreans, I will take _you_ as my guide! “------Nor be my thoughts Presumptuous counted, if amid the calm That soothes the vernal evening into smiles, I steal impatient, from the sordid haunts Of strife and low ambition, to attend Thy sacred presence, in the sylvan shade, By their malignant footstep ne’er profaned.”--THOMSON. CHAPTER XXX. Before we descend to language, I shall collect the historical concordances that bear upon this investigation.