SINCE native historians have wholly failed in assigning any very probable use to this ancient structure, the Irish Pillar Tower, little more can be performed by the analyst of the records of that country, than to relate the hypotheses which enthusiasm and ingenuity have at various times suggested. It can hardly be asserted that scholarship has yet been appealed to for co-operation in the pursuit; for, with the exception of O'Brien's Essay, no dissertation on this subject, hitherto published, breathes the language, exhibits the researches of a scholar, or makes deep learning an adjunct. O'Halloran, whose literary labours were limited to his country's history, writes, "These ancient monuments, from their solidity at this day, appear to have been built with such firmness, as almost to defy the ravages of time: they were the retreats of wretched hermits and pious recluses." Is it probable, that men so steeped in penury could have raised such solid and substantial fabrics, in a country where architecture was so imperfectly understood? Besides, this appropriation is too general and indefinite. Another antiquary, more cautious in the use of language, says, "I cannot help inclining to the opinion of their being belfries, as their very name in Irish (cloghad) imports a steeple with a bell; and from the following consideration :—Over a great part of the eastern world, they have tall round steeples, called minarets, with balconies at top, from whence a person summonses the people to worship at stated hours. As the Irish derived their arts from Phoenicia, we may suppose from thence also came the model of these towers, which served, as the minarets of the East do at present, till bells came into use; for narrow as they are, (about ten feet in the clear at the base) they might hold a bell large enough to summon the congregation as effectually as the voice of a man." Upon this theory it may be remarked, that, although bells were introduced in England about the year 700, there is no evidence of the date of their introduction into the adjoining island; at all events, the theory presumes that the use of bells was known there when the pillar-towers were built, which is a petitio principii. Ireland may have derived her arts originally from Phoenicia, but in that country no building resembling the Irish pillar-tower can be found, although fac-similes, or nearly so, exist more easternly and southernly. Still these cylindrical structures may have been really belfries, from

the highest windows of which hand-bells may have been sounded. If they were built before the ninth century, the bell then in common use was about twelve inches in height, square or parallelogramic, and tolled by the hand immediately. One of these ancient archetypes is to be seen in the rood-loft of the old church of Dollwyddellan, in Caernarvonshire. The most pressing argument, however, against this being the sole motive for the erection of pillar-towers is, that two are sometimes found within some hundred yards of each other.

The learned antiquary Harris, a cautious student of the works of Ware, thinks they must have been Christian in their purposes, and corresponding to that pillar on the summit of which Stylites stood for forty years. There is no plateau on the summit of any, on the contrary they are all roofed with the conical cap, the inverted nelumbium, precisely resembling the covering of all Chinese pagodas. Here again the date of their erection is assumed to be subsequent to the establishment of Christianity in Ireland. Ledwich, a prejudiced writer upon the antiquities of his country, recapitulated the exploded argument in favour of their being bell-towers, simply adding, that they are of Danish origin. Had they been the work of these destroyers, they would have possessed dimensions sufficient to accommodate bells of large diameter; coeval churches would probably have been built beside them, and their originals would now be found in Denmark: but none of these things are so. There are in Persia, the land of fireworshippers, towers or temples to the sun, detached, and narrow, and accessible by doorways some twenty feet from the level of the ground. General Valancey, an Oriental scholar, considers that the Irish tower was also a temple of the great luminary of the universe, where the sacred fire of Baal (the sun) was preserved for worship. He adduces the name Baltinglass, (Baal-tinne-glass) the fire of Baal's mysteries, as a strong presumptive argument from analogy of language. Few have ventured to adopt this fanciful, yet by no means contemptible, theory.

Colonel de Montmorency Morres has published a few pages only upon this antiquarian mystery, fraught with ingenuity, and peculiarly interesting from the author's travelled experience. He thinks that the first Christian teachers who visited Ireland, feeling a necessity for securing their persons and their properties from the sudden attacks of the unconverted and angry heathens, with the assistance of the Christianized toparchs reared those lofty and impregnable retreats. They found competent architects in the pilgrims and friars from Greece and Italy, suitable designs in the little citadels built by the Copts in Egypt, as a protection against the frequent violence of their Arab rulers: and, imitating their example, the Irish missionaries of old usually deposited their relics, their MSS., their treasures, within these sanctuaries, where, if danger threatened, they took shelter along with them. This conjecture was first advanced by Colonel Montmorency, but it has been rather disingenuously appropriated by subsequent writers on Irish antiquities. It is not a little remarkable that the little tract itself is supposed to have been bought up with the sinister and secret motive of gradual extinction. This, however, seems hardly credible, from the very limited, as well as very problematical, nature of its contents.