The nature of the human mind has been successfully unfolded, and certain maxims respecting the moral and physical world have been received with satisfaction, by enlightened minds. By collation of evidence truth is daily ascertained, and knowledge of truth is disseminated by recent discoveries and inventions, which, if we may judge from the effects they have already produced, will, within the compass of not far distant periods, add to the store of rational conviction, and establish upon the most firm and solid basis, truths the most important to the felicity of mankind. The reign of falsehood and prejudice will be gradually overturned, the progress of knowledge in arts, sciences and institutions, civil, political, and religious, will unfetter the general mind, and enable the human race to perceive more clearly, the folly and pernicious tendency of hostilities, and dispose them more and more to acknowledge the utility and wisdom of brotherly love.

THE GAEL, WHENCE SPRUNG.

LEAVING these general considerations to the contemplation of enlightened minds, let us turn our eyes to the ancient Britons, and inquire who they were, and whence they sprung. Were they aborigines of the British soil, or did they migrate from some other parts of the earth already replete with inhabitants?

The answer to these questions leads back far beyond the existence of any historical monuments relative to the inhabitants of the British islands. It may therefore be deemed too high presumption to attempt to throw any degree of satisfactory light upon an object so much involved in the darkness of remote antiquity. It becomes us then to solicit the indulgence of the learned, when we submit to the public eye those matters of evidence which have occurred, respecting the origin, the descent, and the generic appellation of the most ancient inhabitants of the British islands, as well as of a great portion of the inhabitants of the European quarter of the globe. It is universally admitted to be a difficult task to trace the origin of nations. "The regions of " antiquity," says a learned author, "are inhabit"ed by phantoms and strange forms. Nations,

"like individuals, are proud of their genealogy"It is with bodies of people as with individual

persons; they are ignorant of their own births " and infancies, or if they do know any thing of "their originals, they are beholden to the acci" dental records that others have kept of it."

Prior to the invention of written characters, by which intelligence of historical facts may be faithfully recorded, oral tradition was the vehicle of knowledge; a mode of information which was liable to be disguised by the embellishments of fancy, the effusions of the warm imaginations of poets, by the vanity of descent from an illustrious ancestry, and by a variety of prejudices, which, in the first ages, influence the human mind, and produce those traditionary fables, in which the earliest accounts of nations, as given by themselves, are universally found to be involved.

When we take even a superficial view of the surface of the globe which we inhabit, we evidently perceive, that, at some unknown remote periods, various revolutions have happened, which not only affected materially the superficial structure of the earth, but the state and condition of the animals who lived on it, and derived their nourishment from its elements.

The boasted pre-eminence of our species over all other animals, in arts of ingenious contrivance, in mental capacities, which elevate our hopes beyond terrestrial enjoyments, in abilities of recog

nizing the wisdom of the great Author of nature in the works of creation, may lead us to form high pretensions as to the extent of our powers and faculties, and to conceive proud and arrogant opinions respecting our acquaintance with the formation and structure of this mass of matter, over which we have denominated ourselves lords and masters; but so inadequate is our penetration of causes, so weak our discernment of effects, so limited is the scope of our understanding, so circumscribed is the circle of our knowledge, that we must confess with regret and mortification, that the utmost labours and researches of minds the most enlightened in science and philosophy, have still left us to wander in the wide fields of uncertainty and conjecture, without pointing to any path in which we can tread without danger, or to any light by which we can guide our steps with safety, toward a satisfactory knowledge of the causes which led to the earth's formation, of those which produced its revolutions, or of what we naturally most wishfully desire,-a certain comprehension of the manner in which the first beings of our own species were brought into form and existence.

As the most enlightened philosophy, with all its attainments, is insufficient to gratify our wishes on these the most interesting subjects, let us with due reverence bow to the authority of that divine lawgiver Moses, who, in the lan

guage of beautiful simplicity, refers our origin directly to the will of the Creator of the universe, manifested by the existence of an original pair of the human kind, placed in a state of capacity to people the earth.

In what particular spot of the globe these progenitors of the human race first drew their breath and propagated their species, is a question which has eluded the search of the most curious and inquisitive minds.

It has been clearly ascertained by the diligence of travellers of approved information, in ancient and modern times, that a great extent of territory bordering on the river Euphrates was, of all other portions of the earth's surface, apparently the best calculated for promoting the increase of the human species. Great plains, stretching out on all sides to a vast extent, in a happy climate, a soil of superabundant fertility to supply the wants of man, were calculated to produce a rapid increase of population; it being a proposition, the truth of which is evinced by experience, that man, as well as every species of animals, naturally multiplied in proportion to the means of subsistence within their reach; the progress of population being always facilitated or impeded, according to the degrees of difficulty with which the acquisition of the means of gratifying natural wants is attended. Hence it is reasonable to conclude, that the fruitful country just mentioned would be very early productive of great popu