the text in his hand—"Nor settled from the storm is Erin's sea of war; they glitter beneath the moon, and, low-humming, still roll on the field. Alone are the steps of Cathmor, before them on the heath; he hangs forward with all his arms on Morven's flying host.... They who were terrible were removed: Lubar winds again in their host":—and then ask himself deliberately if the whole scene, with the relative changes of position in the contending armies, the retreat of the one that had been advancing, the pursuit of the other that had been retreating, the recrossing of the stream by both over some of its hundred links, and the temporary pause of battle in that valley, with hosts on either side of the river which now flowed through the ranks of one of them, whilst the other was in retreat up the ridge—could have been more truly described by poet or geographer than it has been in these few words of Ossian? Onward let him proceed, if he pleases, by Ballynure and Ballyclare to Lough Neagh; or let him return again across the valley to the north, in a line at right angles to the road between Larne and Connor. But before he moves from the spot let him glance round for a moment to the south, in the direction of Carrickfergus—"where a valley spreads green behind the hill [literally spreads] with its three blue streams. The sun is there in silence; [that touch is wonderful—no war, as yet, is there] and the dun mountain roes come down." Let him search there at leisure, if he pleases, and he will find the stream of the Noisy Vale, where poor Sulmalla saw the vision of Cathmor's ghost, and "the lake of roes," where Lady Morna died, still Loch Mourne, a little farther east on the mountain. But if this should be inconvenient, then by a step or two forward to the top of the ridge on the right he will come in view of the northern branch of the Six-Mile-Water; and now let him steadily consider what he sees. From east to west before him, lies the Drumadarragh range; between himself and which lies the valley of the Deer Park, intersected by the river, whereabouts, in all probability, the assassination of Oscar took place. Beyond the ridge and through the pass just visible, rises the Glenwherry Water; near the head of which, as has been fully explained, both in "Ossian and the Clyde" and elsewhere, should be found a cave in some rocky cliff, with oaks, or the remains of oaks, before it; whilst the river, in its sheltered course or Cluna, glides below. "Crommal, with woody rocks and misty top, the field of winds, pours forth to the light blue Lubar's streamy roar. Behind it rolls clear-winding Lavath, in the still vale of deer. A cave is dark in a rock; above it strong-winged eagles dwell; broad-headed oaks before it, sound in Cluna's wind. Within, in his locks of youth, is Ferad-Artho, blue-eyed king, the son of broad-shielded Cairbar, from Ullin of the roes. He listens to the voice of Condan, as grey he bends in feeble light. He listens, for his foes dwell in the echoing halls of Temora. He comes at times abroad, in the skirts of mist, to pierce the bounding roes. When the sun looks on the field, nor by the rock nor stream is he! He shuns the race of Bolga, who dwell in his father's hall." Let him march then to Ferad-Artho's hiding place, across the intervening valley—taking leisurely note, as he goes, of every monolith or cairn on his track; and either up the face of the hill, or through the pass on his right, where the high road now runs, and so on to the hamlet of Maghgerabane; above which, on the Skerry—a gloomy, low-browed, basaltic precipice before him—like a dark porch or portico, in the very face of the rock, halfway up, he will descry the cave in question. He should now cross the Glenwherry at the village, in its grassy gorge, and draw nearer to the portico on the hillside beyond it, keeping a steady look-out for the roots of oaks, for they are still to be discovered there, as he ascends the cliff. Three of them in a row, about twenty feet below the cave, but directly in front of it, although now overwhelmed with ruins, still send up shoots; and two more, a little farther up to the west of it, are equally conspicuous. He will find the cave itself half-ruined already, by the continual fall of basaltic masses from the mountain; and in attempting to scale the rock at the door of the cave, he should be as circumspect as possible, lest a worst thing than the breaking of a bone befals him. He need not, however, be afraid of "strong-winged eagles," for they are gone; nor need he look for "bounding roes" in the valley, for they are probably exterminated; but he may still look westward on one of the sweetest and stillest vales in the bounds of the Island; and when he remembers that he is now within a few miles of Connor, which is the Temora of Ossian, he will have no difficulty in understanding how Ferad-Artho was brought for shelter and for safety to the cave just above him; or how easily the boy-king could be discovered there by his friends in Fingal's camp to the south, who knew exactly where to find him. Such explorations are but the one-half of what may still be made from the text of Ossian, in this very region; but these will occupy at least three days of a week in summer, and are long enough for present detail in the columns of the Celtic. There are other regions however, far beyond Ireland, not so accessible to ordinary tourists, which may be examined nevertheless, with equal certainty by geological survey and geographical report; and to these, on some future occasion, we may take an opportunity of directing the reader's attention.

In the meantime, by way of bringing our present argument to a point, would the reader believe that Macpherson, by whose text alone hitherto we have been guided, was himself more ignorant of these very scenes than a school boy; that he never, in fact, saw them, and did not know where, in Scotland or in Ireland, they were to be found? Yet such is the case. Of the Clyde, of which he could not help knowing something, he knew nevertheless very little—yet not much less than some of our modern geologists; but of localities on the Clyde, or between the Forth and the Clyde, as described in Ossian, he knew nothing. The Kelvin, in like manner, as an Ossianic river, was utterly unknown to him; he does not even attempt to translate its name. All that pertains to Arran, and still so distinctly traceable there by the help of his own text in Berrathon—for which Gaelic no longer exists—he transfers in his ignorance to the wilds of Morven. As for Ireland, all that he knows, or seems to know, is that Ullin is Ulster; but the very scenes which are most conspicuous in Ulster he transfers to Leinster—from Antrim, for example, to Meath; and the rest to some undistinguishable point between Londonderry and Armagh. He brings Sulmalla and her forefathers from Wales instead of Wigtonshire, into Wicklow instead of Ardglass; and he lands both Swaran and Cuchullin and Fingal in Lough Foyle apparently, instead of in the Bay of Larne or Belfast? In such circumstances, of what use is it for critics any longer to go on squabbling over Gaelic editions, collecting and collating mediæval Gaelic ballads, and asserting with hopeless fatuity that he was the author of these poems, or that he stole them from the Irish? The Irish themselves are as ignorant of the subject as he is; and yet in spite of all this ignorance on his part and theirs, the text of his translation has received on every page of it the unequivocal countersign of Nature, which can neither be forged nor forfeited. Taking all which into account, does it not now begin to be plain to unprejudiced readers that the whole of this Ossianic controversy has been hitherto on wrong ground; and that if the truth of it is to be arrived at, at all, it must be removed to other ground—from questionable MSS. and mediæval ballads, to the region of facts and the domain of reality? We do not assert that the sort of facts now adduced by