I think that no one who reads the
first two volumes of this history would greatly care to bear a hand
in the destruction of that tomb at Tara, in which long since his
people laid the bones of Cuculain; and I think, too, that they
would not like to destroy any other monument of the same age, when
they know that the history of its occupant and its own name are
preserved in the ancient literature, and that they may one day
learn all that is to be known concerning it. I am sure that if the
case were put fairly to the Irish landlords and country gentlemen,
they would neither inflict nor permit this outrage upon the
antiquities of their country. The Irish country gentleman prides
himself on his love of trees, and entertains a very wholesome
contempt for the mercantile boor who, on purchasing an old place,
chops down the best timber for the market. And yet a tree, though
cut down, may be replaced. One elm tree is as good as another, and
the thinned wood, by proper treatment, will be as dense as ever;
but the ancient mound, once carted away, can never be replaced any
more. When the study of the Irish literary records is revived, as
it certainly will be revived, the old history of each of these
raths and cromlechs will be brought again into the light, and one
new interest of a beautiful and edifying nature attached to the
landscape, and affecting wholly for good the minds of our people.
Irishmen are often taunted with the fact that their history is yet
unwritten, but that the Irish, as a nation, have been careless of
their past is refuted by the facts which I have mentioned.
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