Ireland Author:James Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: glen; and farther on is the gloomy vale famed for being the retreat of St. Kevin or Coemgen, from the unceasing entreaties of the beautiful Cathlin, who is said ... more »to have been descended from an illustrious race, and endowed with rich domains. But beyond the reach of history to be much relied upon, Glendalough appears to have been a seat of learning, of religion, as well as of superstition ; and in the transition of the Irish from Druidism to Christianity, it is not to be supposed that knowledge or learning was to be lost, though the Druids were no longer teachers; nor, is it to be expected, that all idolatrous practices, would be at once abandoned by the people. As soon as the Druids were expelled from their colleges, groves, and high places, upon which most of their magical arts or religious ceremonies were performed, and where they had also long held courts of justice, the new Christians evidently took possession of them for their religious purposes: indeed, some of our greatest sages of the present day, in the liberal views they take of men's actions, conceive that the early propagators of Christianity in Ireland were too wise, too good judges of human nature, to " expect that men could be induced all at once, and without the possibility of relapse, to abandon forms, to desert, l perhaps to destroy, fanes hallowed to them, however mis- ) takingly, by a thousand endearing associations: instead, -therefore, of insisting upon, or attempting to accomplish anything of the kind, they retained the place of worship, while they changed the object of adoration. Hence—add these sages—we see the Christian Church, and the symbol of atonement reared beside the tower of the Guebre. The fane of Baal become the temple of Jehovah. The Milcom of the Ammonite, the Ashtoreth of the Sidonian, give pl...« less