clue, yet yielding none.
There is a like script on the cromlech at Castlederg in Tyrone, if
indeed the markings were ever the record of some thought to be
remembered, and not mere ornament. The chambered cromlech of Lisbellaw
in Fermanagh has like markings; they are too similar to be quite
independent, yet almost too simple to contain a recorded thought.

We come once more to Donegal. On the hill-top of Beltaney, near Raphoe,
there is a very massive circle formed of sixty-seven huge blocks. Here
again the Stonehenge ring might be set up within the Irish circle,
leaving an avenue eight paces wide all round it. The sacred fire was
formerly kindled here to mark the birth of Spring. The name of the old
festival of Beltane still lingers on the hill. At Culdaff in north
Donegal, at the end of the Inishowen peninsula, stands another great
stone circle, with which we must close our survey of these titanic
monuments.

We have mentioned a few only among many; yet enough to show their
presence everywhere throughout the land, in the valleys or on mountain
summits, in the midst of pastures or on lonely and rugged isles. One
group, as we have seen, cannot be younger than ten thousand years, and
may be far older. The others may be well coeval. Their magnitude, their
ordered ranks, their universal presence, are a startling revelation of
the material powers of the men of that remote age; they are a testimony,
not less wonderful, of the moral force which dedicated so much power to
ideal ends. Finally, they are a monument to remind us how little we yet
know of the real history of our race.

III.

THE CROMLECH BUILDERS.

In every district of Ireland, therefore, there remain these tremendous
and solemn survivors of a mighty past. The cromlechs, with their
enormous masses upheld in the air, rising among the fertile fields or
daisy-dotted pastures; the great circles of standing stones, starred
everywhere, in the valleys or upon the uplands, along the rough sides of
heather-covered hills. They have everywhere the same aspect of august
mystery, the same brooding presence, like sentinels of another world. It
is impossible not to feel their overshadowing majesty. Everywhere they
follow the same designs in large simplicity; inspired by the same
purpose, and with the same tireless might overcoming the tremendous
obstacles of their erection; they are devoted everywhere not to material
and earthly ends, but to the ideal purposes of the invi