The absence, therefore, of any vestiges of other _coeval_ structures, for private abode or public exhibition, should excite in us no surprise; more especially when we recollect that in the East also--whence all our early customs have been derived--their mud-built houses present the greatest possible contrast between the simplicity of their domestic residences and the magnificence and grandeur of their religious conventicles--Verum illi delubra deorum pietate, domos sua gloria decorabant.[51] But though this my reply is triumphantly subversive of the Colonel’s first position, I shall dwell upon it a little longer, to hold forth, with merited retaliation, either his disingenuousness or his forgetfulness; because the same inference which he deduced from the non-appearance of coeval architecture of any _other_ class, would apply as well to the period which _he_ wishes to establish as the era of the erection of the Towers,--and of which era, he admits, no other architectural monuments do remain,--as to that which I shall incontrovertibly prove was their proper epoch. Then, without having recourse to the _impossibility_--of which all travellers complain--to ascertain even the _situation_ of those gigantic cities which in other parts of the globe, at equally remote periods of time, were cried up as the wonders of the age--the masterpieces of human genius, making their domes almost kiss the stars; without betaking myself, I say, to those, the only memorials of which are now to be found in that of the _echo_, which, to your affrighted fancy, asking inquisitively and incredulously, “Where are they?” only repeats responsively, “Where are they?”--passing over this, I tell him that, more highly favoured than other countries, we possess, in Ireland, ample evidences of those remnants which he so vauntingly challenges. Traverse the isle in its inviting richness, over its romantic mountains and its fertile valleys, and there is scarcely an old wall you meet, or an old hedge you encounter, that you will not find, _embedded_ among the mass, some solitary specimens of chiselled execution, which, in their proud, aristocratic bearing, afford ocular and eloquent demonstration of their having _once_ occupied a more respectable post. Not less futile than the foregoing is his second objection, arising from what he represents as the silence of “the busy and fantastic bard.” Doubtless he reckoned upon _this_ as his most impregnable battery; and I readily believe that most of his readers anticipate the same result: but this little book will soon shiver the fallacy of such calculations, and adduce, in its proper place, from the very head and principal of the _bardic order_--no less a personage than Amergin himself--its _towering_ refutation; as well as the _final_, incontrovertible appropriation of those structures to their _actual_ founders.