“It may appear to you a forced etymology,” said the priest, “yet it has the sanction of _Camden_, who first risked the supposition. But it is the fate of our unhappy country to receive as little credit in the present day, for its former celebrity, as for its great antiquity, * although the former is attested by _Bede_, and many other early British writers, and the latter is authenticated by the testimony of the most ancient Greek authors. For _Jervis_ is mentioned in the _Argonautica_ of _Orpheus_, long before the name of England is anywhere to be found in Grecian literature. And surely it had scarcely been first mentioned, had it not been first known.” * It has been the fashion to throw odium on the modern Irish, by undermining the basis of their ancient history, and vilifying their ancient national character. If a historian professes to have acquired his information from the records of the country whose history he writes, his accounts are generally admitted as authentic, as the commentaries of Garcilasso de Vega are considered as the chief pillars of Peruvian history, though avowed by their author to have been compiled from the old national ballads of the country; yet the old writers of Ireland, (the Psalter of Cashel in particular) though they refer to these ancient re cords of their country, authenticated by existing manners and existing habits, are plunged into the oblivion of contemptuous neglect, or read only to be discredited. “Then you really suppose,” said I, smiling incredulously, “we are indebted to you for the name of our country?” “I know,” said the priest, returning my smile, “the fallacies in general of all etymologists, but the only part of your island anciently called by any name that bore the least affinity to _Albion_, was _Scotland_, then called _Albin_, a word of _Irish_ etymology, _Albin_ signifying mountainous, from Alb, a mountain.” “But, my dear friend,” I replied, “admitting the great antiquity of your country, allowing it to be early inhabited by a lettered and civilized people, and that it was the _Nido paterno_ of western literature when the rest of Europe was involved in darkness; how is it that so few monuments of your ancient learning and genius remain? Where are your manuscripts, your records, your annals, stamped with the seal of antiquity to be found?”