Ruins, it is true, of chapels and dilapidated cathedrals are frequently found in the vicinity of our Round Towers; but these betray in their _materials_ and architecture the stamp of a later age, having been founded by missionaries of the early Christian Church, and purposely thus collocated--contiguous to edifices long before hallowed by a religious use--to at once conciliate the prejudices of those whom they would fain persuade, and divert their adoration to a more purified worship. And yet, upon this single circumstance of proximity to ecclesiastical dilapidations--coupled with the bas-relief of a crucifix which presents itself over the door of the Budhist temple of Donoghmore in Ireland, and that of Brechin in Scotland--have the deniers of the antiquity of those venerable memorials raised that superstructure of historical imposture, which, please God, I promise them, will soon crumble round their ears before the indignant effulgence of regenerated veracity. It might be sufficient for this purpose, perhaps, to tell them that similar ruins of early Christian churches are to be met with abundantly in the neighbourhood of Cromleachs and Mithratic caves all through the island; and that they might as well, from this vicinity, infer that those two other vestiges of heathenish adoration were contrived by our early Christians as appendages to the chapels, as they would fain make out--by precisely the same mode of inference--that the Round Towers had been! But this would not suit; they could find no ascription associated with Christianity which cave or cromleach could subserve; and thus have the poor missionaries escaped the cumbrous imputation of having those colossal pagan slabs and those astounding gentile excavations affiliated upon them. Not so fortunate the Towers. After ransacking the whole catalogue of available applications appertaining to the order of monastic institutions with which to _Siamise_ those temples, Montmorency has at last hit upon the noble and dignified department of a “dungeon-keep” or “lock-up!” as the sole use and intention of their original erection! As I intend, however, to unravel this fallacy in its proper quarter, I shall resume, for the present, the thread of my discourse. Besides the absurdity, then, of bestowing such magnificence upon so really inconsiderable a thing as a belfry, while the supposed churches were doomed to dwindle and moulder in decay, is it not astonishing that we find no vestiges of the like fashion, or structures of the like form, in any of those countries where the people to whom the advocates of this theory ascribe their erection have since and before exercised sway? The Danes had dominion in Britain longer and more extensively than they ever had in _this_ island; and yet, in the whole compass of England, from one extremity to the other, is there not one fragment of architecture remaining to sanction the idea of identity or resemblance!