a large history in massive stone, yet a history which, even now, is dim
as the dawn it belongs to. What can be called forth from that Archaic
Darkness, in the backward and abysm of Time, we shall try to evoke;
drawing the outlines of a people who, with large energies in our visible
world, toiled yet more for the world invisible; a people uniform through
the whole land and beyond it, along many neighboring shores; a people
everywhere building; looking back into a long past; looking forward
through the mists of the future. A people commemorating the past in a
form that should outlast the future. A people undertaking great
enterprises for mysterious ends; whose works are everywhere among us, to
this day, imperishable in giant stone; yet a people whose purposes are
mysterious to us, whose very name and tongue are quite unknown. Their
works still live all around us in Ireland, spread evenly through the
four provinces, a world of the vanished past enduring among us into the
present; and, so mightily did these old builders work, and with such
large simplicity, that what they built will surely outlast every
handiwork of our own day, and endure through numberless to-morrows,
bridging the morning and evening twilight of our race.

After this Archaic Dawn we shall find a mingling of four races in
Ireland, coming together from widely separated homes, unless one of the
four be the descendant of the archaic race, as well it may be. From the
surging together of these four races we shall see, in almost
pre-historic times, the growth of a well-knit polity; firm
principalities founded, strong battles fought, a lasting foundation of
law. In this Second Epoch, every thing that in the first was dim and
vague grows firm in outline and defined. Names, places, persons,--we
know them all as if they were of to-day. This is the age which flowered
in the heroic days of Emain of Maca, Emain 'neath the beech-trees, the
citadel of northeastern Ireland. Here we shall find the court of Fergus