But were all _external_ testimonies silent on the matter, and mercenary vouchers even assert the reverse, the internal evidence of our language itself, a language so truly characterised as “more than three thousand years old,” would afford to the ingenious and disinterested inquirer the most convincing proof of the ground which I have assumed. In that language--and the writer of this essay _ought_ to know _something_ of it--there is scarcely a single term appertaining to time, from _la_ a day, derived from _liladh_, to turn round,--in allusion to the diurnal revolution,--up to _bleain_, a year, compounded of _Bel_, the sun, and _Ain_, a circle, referring to its annual orbit, that does not, in its formation and construction, associate the idea with the planetary courses, and thereby evince, not only an astronomical taste, but that astronomy was the “ruling passion” of those who spoke it. “The Irish language,” says Davies, an intelligent and respectable Welsh writer, “appears to have arrived at maturity amongst the Iapetidæ, while they were yet in contact with Aramæan families, and formed a powerful tribe in Asia Minor and in Thrace. It may, therefore, in particular instances, have more similitude or analogy to the Asiatic dialects than what appears in those branches of the Celtic that were matured in the west of Europe. Those who used this language consisted partly of Titans, of Celto-Scythians, or of those Iapetidæ who assisted in building the city of Babel, and must have been habituated, after the dispersion, to the dialects of the nations through which they passed, before they joined the society of their brethren.” We thank this learned author for the flattering notice which he has been pleased to take of us; and though, in his subsequent remarks, he steers far wide of our true pedigree, yet a concession so important as that even here adduced, must command at least our becoming acknowledgments. The splendid examples which we have had of primitive teachers of Christianity in this kingdom, and whom Ledwich himself, reluctant as he was to afford ordinary justice to Irish merit, is obliged to praise, were not more remarkable for the sanctified zeal and enthusiastic devotion with which they propagated the Gospel, than they were for the diversified range of their literary acquirements, and the moral sublimity of their ideas and conceptions.[72] Speaking of a production belonging to one of these worthies, Ledwich remarks: “In this tract we can discover Cumman’s acquaintance with the doctrine of time, and the chronological characters. He is no stranger to the solar, lunar, and bissextile years, to the epactal days, and embolismal months, nor to the names of the Hebrew, Macedonian, and Egyptian months. To examine the various cyclical systems, and to point out their construction and errors, required no mean abilities: a large portion of Greek and Latin literature was also necessary.”[73]