The people of Ireland lay claim to a very extravagant antiquity, through a vanity common to all nations.  The accounts which are given by their ancient chronicles of their first settlements are generally tales confuted by their own absurdity.  The settlement of the greatest consequence, the best authenticated, and from which the Irish deduce the pedigree of the best families, is derived from Spain:  it was called Clan Milea, or the descendants of Milesius, and Kin Scuit, or the race of Scyths, afterwards known by the name of Scots.  The Irish historians suppose this race descended from a person called Gathel, a Scythian by birth, an Egyptian by education, the contemporary and friend of the prophet Moses.  But these histories, seeming clear-sighted in the obscure affairs of so blind an antiquity, instead of passing for treasuries of ancient facts, are regarded by the judicious as modern fictions.  In cases of this sort rational conjectures are more to be relied on than improbable relations.  It is most probable that Ireland was first peopled from Britain.  The coasts of these countries are in some places in sight of each other.  The language, the manners, and religion of the most ancient inhabitants of both are nearly the same.  The Milesian colony, whenever it arrived in Ireland, could have made no great change in the manners or language; as the ancient Spaniards were a branch of the Celtae, as well as the old inhabitants of Ireland.  The Irish language is not different from that of all other nations, as Temple and Rapin, from ignorance of it, have asserted; on the contrary, many of its words bear a remarkable resemblance not only to those of the Welsh and Armoric, but also to the Greek and Latin.  Neither is the figure of the letters very different from the vulgar character, though their order is not the same with that of other nations, nor the names, which are taken from the Irish proper names of several species of trees:  a circumstance which, notwithstanding their similitude to the Roman letters, argues a different original and great antiquity.  The Druid discipline anciently flourished in that island.  In the fourth century it fell down before the preaching of St. Patrick.  Then the Christian religion was embraced and cultivated with an uncommon zeal, which displayed itself in the number and consequence of the persons who in all parts embraced the contemplative life.  This mode of life, and the situation of Ireland, removed from the horror of those devastations which shook the rest of Europe, made it a refuge for learning, almost extinguished everywhere else.  Science flourished in Ireland during the seventh and eighth centuries.  The same cause which destroyed it in other countries also destroyed it there.  The Danes, then pagans, made themselves masters of the island, after a long and wasteful war, in which they destroyed the sciences along with the monasteries in which they were cultivated.  By as destructive a war they were at length expelled; but neither their