Think you that the testimony of Festus Avienus, who wrote before the Christian light, and who avowedly only compiled his treatise from other more ancient authorities--think you, I say, that _his_ designation of this island as “sacred”--and which he says was the appropriate denomination by which the still greater ancients used to call it--was an idle sobriquet or an arbitrary adjective? Amongst the many discoveries which will develop themselves in succession, before I shall have done with this little book, I pledge myself to the public incontrovertibly to prove that the word “_Hibernian_”--so grossly abused and so malignantly vilified, and which Avienus has recorded as the name of the _islanders_ at the period in which he wrote, as it is still to this day--signifies, in its _component essence_, and according to the nicest scrutiny of etymological analysis, independently _altogether_ of historical corroboration, _an inhabitant of the sacred isle_; and has _nothing_ on earth to do with _Heber_ or Heremon; or _hiar_, the west; or _iberin_, extremes; or any other such outlandish nonsense! Now comes the Colonel’s _fifth_ and _last_ objection; viz. that because there existed at Baal Heremon, in India, a temple sacred to Baal, the capacity of which was sufficient to accommodate four thousand persons, therefore the Round Towers, which are “internally too confined to admit into them, at once, a dozen bulky persons, could not be denominated a temple.” Does not the Colonel know that there existed a plurality of those Baals? that, in fact, they were as innumerable as the stars in the firmament, resolving themselves--according to the character of every distinct country, and of every minor subdivision and canton in that country--into the specific and gentile classifications of Baal Shamaim, Baal Pheor or Phearagh, Baal Meon, Baal Zephon, Baal Hemon, etc.; while under the _veil_ of all, the learned ever understood to have been solely personated the sun and moon. “Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and the men of Babylon made Succoth-Benoth.”[53] In accordance with the _different_ views under which each people considered the _bounties_ of those luminaries, so did their temples assume a corresponding shape; and it shall be my lot, in the progress of this litigated research, to show why the followers of one of those Baals, namely, Baal Phearagh, gave their temples this _erect_, _narrow_, and _elevated roundness_. I have thus annihilated those visionary ramparts which my opponent had flattered himself he had raised against the intrusion of long-suppressed truth; and by the help of which, as a military bastion, he had fondly hoped he might link together the Church and the sword in one _cemented_ bond of anachronism. Let us see, however, how he would bring about the match, with the articles of intermarriage, and so forth.