To the point, however.--The great miracle after all is, that after the decease of those “fairy” masters, no one of their native helpmates could be found able to join together with mechanical skill two pieces of hewn stone with the intermediate amalgam of adhesive mortar! The thing is so absurd as to make the Colonel himself in his honesty to exclaim, “Is this simple process that mighty piece of necromancy which, according to some authors” (forgetting that he was one of those himself), “that _lively_ people were unable to comprehend?” It is amusing to see how encomiastic and commendatory he is of the “Hibernians” when it answers his views; and how vituperative and condemnatory when it is equally to his purpose. The last assumption of this writer, and which I have purposely reserved until now is an affected parallel of the Irish Culdees with the Egyptian Cophtes. “Their great piety, austerity, and hospitality announce,” he says, “the existence of one kind of discipline and of kindred religions between the Cophtes and the Irish Cœnobites.” That is, because they are both _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_, they must both necessarily correspond in _religious opinions_ and in _Church forms_! The Indian Brahmins, say I, are also _pious_, _austere_, and _hospitable_; and why are they not incorporated in this holy identification? No, Colonel, it will not do; I see what you are at. You want to insinuate our obligation to the Greeks for the blessings of the Gospel. A false zeal for mental emancipation--subsequent to the dislodgment of spiritual encroachment--has forced into mushroom existence this spurious abortion. Aloof from the thraldom of Roman or other yoke, the Irish, within themselves, cultivated the principles of the Christian verity; but it is, in the extreme, erroneous to say that they derived their _faith_ in that verity through emissaries of the Grecian Church, from whom they differed as substantially as light does from darkness. I think it very probable indeed that the glad tidings of revelation were first imparted to Ireland by the lips of St. Paul himself.[57] We have the names of many Christians existing amongst us before the arrival of either Pelagius or Patrick. The very terms of the commission, which Pope Celestine gave to the _former_, being addressed “ad Scotos in Christum credentes,” to the _Irish who believe in Christ_,--prove the good seed had been laid in the soil before _his_ pontificate. The nation, however, was yet too much immersed in its old idolatries--and the fascinations of their former creed had so spellbound the inhabitants as a community--that those who singled themselves out as converts to the new faith were obliged, from persecution, to betake themselves to other countries. And yet _this_ is the moment when paganism was omnipotent throughout this island, that Colonel de Montmorency has the modesty to tell us that the “Round Towers” were erected as magazines for the monks!