“The great height of the towers has been objected to as entirely superfluous, supposing them to have been applied to such a use; but it may have been customary to place the sacred fire in an elevated position, as an additional mark of respect, and then the towers may have answered more purposes than one; from the windows at the top signals may have been made to summon the faithful to prayer, or the apertures may have been used for astronomical observations, intended to fix the time of the religious feasts. “Christian emblems have been discovered in some of these towers. On the summit of that near Swords, in the county of Dublin, is a small stone cross, and in others even representations of the Virgin have been found; but these, there cannot be a doubt, are of modern addition. That churches and cemeteries should so often be found in the vicinity of these towers is nothing surprising, for a building that has once become sacred in the eyes of a people, generally retains a portion of its sanctity, even though the original religion may be utterly swept away. Most of the early Christian churches were erected on the foundations of heathen temples, and a large portion of the Turkish mosques were formerly Christian churches. “Generally, where in the vicinity of a round tower there occur the ruins of churches, these are in number seven. This has been explained by supposing that, previously to the appearance of St. Patrick, Christianity—but not Roman Catholic Christianity—had been introduced into Ireland. This ante-patrician Christianity is said to have been introduced by the Apostle James, who first preached the gospel in Ireland, and established the Eastern Church there, with the rites of the Eastern Œcumenic Synods; and the frequent appearance of seven churches close to each other is accounted for as a reference to the seven celebrated churches of the East. “In this hypothesis, though stoutly denied by the Roman Catholics, there is nothing improbable, and, if true, it affords another remarkable proof of the early connection between Ireland and the East. In no other Christian land in Europe do we constantly find the ruins of ancient churches in groups of seven. “We effected a landing on Scattery Island, called in ancient times Inniscattery, and at present occupied by a few tenants of a Mr. M’Kean, who graze their cattle there. ‘It is a very old ancient place,’ said one of the boatmen, as he was carrying me through the water on his shoulders, for we had come to a landing-place where the tide had left one foot of water over a large extent of coast. This pleonasm of ‘old ancient’ might be applied to many parts of Ireland, where old and older ruins are constantly found in close contiguity.