the honour of science, too long obscured by lending a credulous ear to the testimony of records, that the wisest and the best still most unaccountably persist in receiving as the only standards of truth.

Left the Scalp behind, with many a sublime recollection; and proceeded on our way metropolisward, through a country without any remarkable attraction, except the sterility of its rocky surface, and the profusion of the Bellis perennis, lending its aid to enliven the scene, with here and there the Crysanthemum leucanthenium expanding its glittering bosom to the refreshing breeze. Howth and Ireland's Eye again demanded our admiration by their abrupt appearance, and then, "like maiden coy," veiling their charms by the intervening angle of some projecting promontory, or the envious screen of a young plantation.

The

villages of the Golden-ball and Stepaside possess no intrinsic beauty. Their fame must depend on their locality; and I therefore leave them in their primitive simplicity, "unhousell'd, unanointed, unanealed."

After passing the latter village, we had a magnificent view of the ruined castle of Kilgobbin-a structure of massive architecture, well adapted to defend its former inhabitants from the depredations of the mountain banditti. While contemplating this venerable pile, my thoughts were in a moment hurried back to the feudal times; and I could almost fancy-fancy is a most imaginative operation of the thinking faculties I could almost fancy that I saw the ancient lady of Kilgobbin, in her wimple and her veil, pacing the battlements, while she touched her Æolian harp with a fitful hand, and cast many an azure glance in the direction from which she expected the return of her armour-clad lord, with his bannered followers. I had no opportunity of examining its donjon keep, or exploring its other intricacies, for the sun was tinting the western horizon with his

golden canopy; and the horse had picked up a nail, which threatened to impede our progress very considerably.

Cullenswood, memorable for the massacre of a pic-nic party from Dublin, on black Monday, by the ambush of a large body of rebels, is a combination of various sized houses and high stone walls, presenting no interesting object

to arrest the attention of the classical tourist. I therefore simply marked the name in my tablets, and hailed it with pleasure on account of its proximity to the end of our eventful journey. This was at length accomplished. I was, in due time, dropped at the Hibernian hotel, in tolerable health and spirits, though, I confess, somewhat fatigued, as the increasing lameness of the horse put us to the great inconve nience of walking much more than I contemplated on undertaking the excursion.

Sunday. Went to church,-dined afterwards with my truly estimable tic tour. Parted from them at ten friends, the companions of my romano'clock." Sweet to the sweets, farewell" with mutual good wishes and pleasing reminiscences on both sides, and retired to bed, after making all necessary preparations for my homeward expedition on the following morning.

Monday.-Rose early; paid my bill, and stepped into the coach, which I had again all to myself. Slept a good deal, and without any adventure worth relating, found myself, late in the evening, set down at my own door. I will not now dilate upon the flood of recollections that rolled their tumultuous waves simultaneously across my memory at that interesting moment. Suffice it to say, that I was a moral personification of the lay of the last minstrel; and I repeated with emphatic pathos, as I threw open the door of my parlour

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!"

SOME time since, the Highland Society of London offered a premium for the best history of the Highland clans. The essay of Mr. Skene, Fellow of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, proved the successful one; and the Highland Society, deeming it worthy the attention of the public, requested that it might be printed. The essay, enlarged and improved, has accordingly issued from the press, and taken a merited place among the many ingenious and learned dissertations on early Scottish history. But while we grant the praise of ingenuity and erudition to Mr. Skene, we are compelled to say, that his essay is only the last example of partizan ingenuity, and one-sided erudition.

Some account of the Scottish controversy will not be unacceptable; for, as Pinkerton says, "to any man who, with Democritus, delights in laughing at the madness of mankind, there cannot be a greater feast than the perusal of the Scottish and Irish contest on their origins ;" and, as we would add on our own account, to any man who, with ourselves, is anxious for the elucidation of truth, there can be no stronger incitement to promote a rational mode of investigation, than an exposure of the follies and contradictions of those who have hitherto pursued the irrational method of postponing the collection of materials to the formation of theories, and who, instead of giving their aid to the publication of the only records from which there remains a chance of eliciting the truth, have spent their time, and exhausted their talents in babbling and quibbling over meagre texts, and inconclusive evidences.

Before giving any account of the controversy, it will be necessary to state the case out of which the dispute arises. The Highlands of Scotland are at present inhabited by a people who speak the Irish language, retain Irish habits, and refer themselves to an Irish origin. An Irish colony is known to have passed over from Ulster to Scotland before, and about, the beginning of the sixth century. And prior to the settlement of this colony, the

greater part of Scotland is known to have been inhabited by a people called Picts or Picks, of whom we know little farther than that they were probably of the same family with a race of people inhabiting the north-east of Ulster, from a very early period. These are the facts as they stand. We now proceed to review the various deductions which national jealousies have drawn from them from time to time.

However disagreeable an Irish alliance has latterly become to our Scottish neighbours, it is certain that while both countries remained unreformed, their common hostility to England prevented any jealousy between them on the score of antiquity, and that the Scotch not only admitted, but plumed themselves on their descent from this country. The question, which is now the plaything of ingenious men, originated in a grave national controversy, arising out of the claim of Edward the First to the Scottish throne, so far back as the end of the thirteenth century. The grounds of the English king's claim may now excite a smile; but in those uncritical days, Pope Boniface the Eighth deemed them worthy the best consideration of the Holy See. They were, that Edward being lineally descended of Brutus, Locrine, &c. was consequently of the older royal stock in Britain, and so possessed a supremacy over the Scottish crown-an argument which will remind the Irish historical reader of the preamble to that famous act of Henry the Eighth, which recites the supremacy of the English crown in this realm in right of King Gurguntius. "To which," says Cox,

might be added that Bayon, from whence the Irish pretend to come, was part of the king's dominion, so that either way his majesty was their natural prince and sovereign!" Such as the argument was, however, the Scots, as Innes says, "would not be behind hand with him in that neither, on account of the pressing occasion they had, in that juncture, not to have the Scots thought in any ways inferior to the English, in so honourable a pre

rogative as that of an ancient monarchy." They accordingly advanced before the Pope that the Scots had also a long succession of kings from before the incarnation; to which Baldred Bisset, their agent, adds, that of these, six-and-thirty monarchs had been Catholic, before so much as the introduction of Christianity into England. This, Innes confesses he cannot fathom, "since at that rate the Scots would have had Christian kings before the time of Christianity;" from which he reasonably enough concludes, that the Scottish Antiquaries "knew nothing yet certain about the beginning of the monarchy or Christianity among them." They were not, however, to be long without more particular, if not more accurate information; for Fordun's Scotchronicon appearing about the year 1386, reduced this fabulous monarchy to order, and invested each imaginary potentate with a name. Instead of an uncertain epoch for the beginning of the Scottish monarchy in Britain, varying from seven to three hundred years before Christ, Fordun fixed his commencement at 330 years before the incarnation, assigned the name of Fergus Mac Ferchart to the first sovereign, and settled the succession from him to Fergus Mac Erc, (the first admitted Scottish or Irish king in Britain,) through a certain series of five and forty monarchs. Fordun is said to have been a learned and an honest man; but that he was certainly in error, is now admitted on all hands -the blame being thrown on those fanciful genealogists whose invention had probably been called into activity by the necessities of the controversy with King Edward. Fordun was followed by Hector Boetius, (Boece, or Boyce,) a native of Dundee, who studied in the University of Paris, about the latter end of the fifteenth century. Boece clothed the skeleton which Fordun had tacked together, with flesh and muscle-gave it an air and countenance, and fitted it for humane society. Princes, who, for the most part, owed their existence to the credulity of Pope Boniface, and their names to the ingenuity of John Fordun, now stepped forth from a barbarous obscurity, invested with characters and manners, and individualized by virtues and vices. The authorities relied on for this important addition to the meagre details of Fordun, were certain manuscripts of supposed writers, called Veremundus, Cornelius Historicus, and

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John Campbell, said to have been discovered in the ancient royal chartulary of Iona. The investigation of the claims of these alleged authorities by Innes, in his Critical Essay, is one of the most ingenious pieces of British criticism, and is quite conclusive as to the fact that they were forgeries-we say were," for soon after their employment by Boece, they disappeared from history. The object of the forgery remains in some doubt, though, from the numerous examples of wicked princes dethroned by their subjects and nobles, and the general inculcation of popular principles throughout the work, it has been very plausibly conjectured, that the whole was the contrivance of some of those concerned in the factions against the monarchical authority in those days, who, "like Annius of Viterbo, another famous impostor, who lived at the same time, have in all appearance first forged, upon John Fordun's chronicle, new histories of Scotland, under the names of Veremund, John Campbel, &c. and then conveyed them so cunningly to the place where they were found, and supposed to have been long preserved, that both the nobleman who sent them, and Boece who made use of them as genuine records, were equally imposed upon."

As Fordun had furnished materials to Boece, in 1526, so did Boece to Buchanan, in 1570; and the elegant latinity of this last writer may be considered as investing the creatures of Bisset's imagination with their final attributes. Two and forty generations of kings, (absolute non-existences, and cousins of Garagantua,) now stood forth, in classic habits and imposing array, distinct with proper characteristics, pregnant with historical examples-their exploits vividly commemorated-their misfortunes touchingly set forth their orations most faithfully recorded-their reality undisputed, and thought to be indisputable. National vanity, gratified by the exhibition of a royal succession, reaching back from the then possessor of the Scottish throne, in uninterrupted series through the heroes and sages of better than eighteen centuries, could afford to leave the higher antiquities of the system undisputed. The glories of forty extra kings atoned for the necessity of an Irish origin; and since Fergus the First could not be severed from Simon Break and Milesius, the Scotch, better satisfied to have the most ancient monarchy in the world

on this condition, than not to have it at all, universally admitted the claim of Scotia Major (Ireland) as the parent state. So that, up to this period, it was not questioned that the Scottish people, almost to a man, were the descendants of an Irish colony; and, indeed, so necessary was this hypothesis to the whole scheme and fabric of their high antiquities, that a particular account of the extermination of the entire Pictish people, by these Irish colonists, formed one of the most prominent features in the whole forgery.

But 66 a ferment of doubt," to use the words of Pinkerton, was at length "to be thrown into the ancient history of Scotland, which was in time to make it run off clearer and clearer, while the dregs of fable sunk to the bottom." In 1639 appeared Usher's Antiquities of the British Churches, the noblest monument of Irish learning yet bequeathed to us. If the whole fraud was not laid open here, as fully as in after times by Innes, it was rather because such a mind as Usher's preferred the simple statement of truth to the entangled dissection of fable. Whatever more important facts have stood the test of subsequent discussion, and stand to this day, meagre it is true, and as yet insufficient for the foundation of more than a modest conjecture, these are here set forth as lucidly as they appear now after two centuries of examination by the ablest men in both islands. They are chiefly these, 1st, That whatever settlements the Dalriadic Scots may have made along the western shores of North Britain, before the time of Fergus, the son of Erc, in the beginning of the_sixth century; this Fergus and not Fergus son of Ferchart, was the first king of the Dalriads, although so low down as forty-first on the imaginary lists of Boece and Buchanan. 2d, That in the time of Columba, the kingdom of the Dalriadic Scots embraced Iona. And, 3d, That the Scottish conquest did not amount to an entire extirpation of the Pictish people. Civil commotions following close on the publication of Usher's work, drew public attention from the investigation to which it had thus widely thrown open the door; and although Sir Robert Gordon of Straloch expressed his doubts of the Boetian fable pretty broadly in his letter to David Buchanan, in 1649, and Sir Robert Sibbald started the theory of the lowlanders being still a remnant of the Pictish people, in his History

of Fife, about 1680, it was not till 1685, upon the publication of O'Flaherty's Ogygia, that Usher's arguments in the hands of Lloyd and Stillingfleet, began to take effect upon the public mind.

The promulgation of opinions so derogatory to their transcendental antiquities, raised, as might be expected, a strange commotion among Scottish writers. The honor of the country was thought at stake. Truth, under such circumstances, was an affront. Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate, flew to arms, and hanging out his banner from "the enchanted castle of old fable," prepared to hold the fabricated bulwarks of Boece against all comers. Dalrymple, Anderson, Dr. M'Kenzie, Abercrombie, Simpson, Hay, Buchanan, Crawford, Gordon, and Scott, successively took the field, or threw themselves into the garrison of fiction. Religious discord mingled with national antipathies— Celt, Saxon-Pict, Scot-Iona, Rome -Presbyter and Bishop-the battle raged-till Innes, 1729, going to work with a clear judgment, and a love of truth superior to passion for country, raised such a battery of facts and authorities against the Boëtian blockhouse, as shortly levelled the whole fabulous fabric with the dust, and left those who had hitherto sheltered their vanity behind its imposing ramparts, without a cobweb to cover them from the arrows of Saxon scorn, on the one hand, or, what was much more afflicting, of Irish patronage on the other.

Zealous Seots were at their wits ends. To grant a Milesian origin to their dynasty, while that dynasty was the most ancient in Europe, was no great hardship; but to admit their descent from a mere Irish colony of the sixth century, was not to be thought of. There were but two ways of escaping so dire a calamity-ist, either to adopt a hint originally thrown out in Lloyd's Archæologia, in 1707, and next year eagerly followed up by Dr. M'Kenzie, in his Lives of the Scottish Writers, and assert that the Scots had proceeded to Ireland from North Britain, and not to North Britain from Ireland; or, 2dly, to amplify the theory of Innes, and, falling back upon the long despised Pictish dynasty, get rid of the modern Fergus and his Irish connection altogether.

Of these two sophisms, the first was earlier and more eagerly adopted. It

exalted the Scotch, and mortified the Irish at the same time; so that it is not surprising it should have had numerous supporters. First after Mackenzie came Maitland, 1757, "a bitter enemy of Innes, of Ireland, of the Picts, and of himself." Next came Goodal-he, in his introduction to a new edition of Fordun, 1759, amplifies the conjecture of Lloyd into the astounding proposition, that Scotland was the Hibernia of Strabo, and that Ireland was wholly unknown to the ancients, till the time of Vespasian !— that consequently Scotia Major was North Britain, the old Scots genuine Caledonians, and Ireland a North British colony! No one describes this absurd fellow so well as Pinkerton:" His book is a violent piece, fraught with contemptible scurrility, low prejudice, small reading, and gross error. He talks like a master, when he is not even a scholar, and dreams he knows every thing, when he knows nothing." This North British theory "this favourite plant of ignorance"to continue the strong language of the Gothic champion" was dunged afresh by the Macphersons" in the following

year.

And certainly so rank a compost of falsehoods has not been applied before or since, to force the growth of an exotic in the soil of history. James Macpherson, the forger of Ossian in 1760, puts forth, in 1762, a dissertation on his own forgery; and for the consolation of Highland pride, pining over the explosion of the Boëtian fable, proves from these evidences, fabricated by himself, this other fable which is equally absurd with, but infinitely more dishonest than, the first-a forgery upon a forgery-a lie built on an imposture-a combination of impudence and dishonesty, unparalleled in the history of literary partizanship.

And here for a while the historical question was lost sight of, in the eagerness with which the learned of Britain contended for and against the claims of Ossian as a poet. Blair, Hume, Kames, even Adam Smith, were carried away by a sublime genius, which all must acknowledge, but which is only the more dangerous for that sublimity when serving, as it does, in the ranks of falsehood. The honor of the first protest belongs to us. O'Connor's Dissertations, published in Dublin, 1766, opened the opposition. The great Dr. Johnson followed on the same side, in 1774. Macpherson bullied-the Doctor wrote him a letter, VOL. IX.

which is among the best of his performances:

"Mr. James Macpherson,-I have received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence that shall be attempted upon me, I will do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do exposing what I think a cheat, by the for me; for I will not be hindered from What would you

menaces of a ruffian. have me retract? I thought your work an imposture-I think so still; and for my opinion I have given reasons, which I here dare you to refute. Your abilities, and what I hear of your morality inclines since your Homer, are not so formidable; me to credit rather what you shall prove, than what you shall say.-S. JOHNSON."

Shaw next assailed the forger, 1781; and in 1785, appeared at Dublin the Ogygia Vindicated" of O'Flaherty, in which the historical inaccuracies of the fiction are clearly exposed; but Whitaker having adopted the poems as evidences in his History of Manchester, 1771, and Clarke and Smith, both Highlandmen, having published in their favour, in 1778 and 1780, the balance of public opinion could be scarcely said to have turned, until in 1786, the Enquiry of Young, bishop of Clonfert, appearing in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, gave a decided preponderance to the sceptical side. Campbell, in his Strictures," in 1789, redoubled the blows of the bishop; and at length John Pinkerton, falling on the battered fabricator whom he had at first supported, literally tore him limb from limb, and scattered Ossian to the winds. Still, in order to make the cheat more manifest, Laing thought it necessary to prefix to his History of Scotland, in 1804, a dissertation on the poems of Ossian, in which he proves, from Macpherson's own admissions, that he had no original. But this was a blow too much, and more than Highland pride could stomach; it brought out the minister of Aberfoyle, 1807, with an essay in which the objections of Laing are sought to be refuted, and the old hoax in all its absurdity revived. Graham's reply was followed close by Sir John Sinclair's" Poems of Ossian, in the Original Gaelic," the crowning imposi tion, and destined to be the final proof The of the imposture. original Gaelic," on examination, turns out to be no more than a modern Gaelic translation of Macpherson's English, palmed upon the credulous baronet by some

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