INTRODUCTION. NATIONS by nature situated in the midst of the world, whatever their origin be, if they make any figure, and become confiderable in peace or war, have their history, either by their own writers or thofe of other countries, transmitted to pofterity; whilst the actions of people more remote, though perhaps not inferior in power, nor lefs confiderable in peace, are loft in the oblivion of time, and their name and language almost annihilated or extinct. Of the latter fort is the Celtic nation. Situated early weft of Greece and Rome, their learning and history, fuch powerful rivals having sprung up to the east of them, either remained with themselves, or emigrated from the continent to Britain and the adjacent islands. Greece, at one time, fubjecting the Eaft, and Rome afterwards becoming mistress both of the East and Weft, the Galic power either decreased or retreated, and, in room of Galic, Roman learning fuc ceeded. Rome, like every other great and wealthy state, by its own weight and unweildinefs, dropt into non-existence; and now its language lives only in in books. An inundation of Barbarians from the northern parts overwhelmed the European continent. Letters, as affrighted, fled to the Hebrides and Ireland for an afylum, where they flourished for fome centuries. Saxon innovation, however, both in the northern and fouthern parts of Britain, proved fatal to the Galic power and language. The Cambrian and the Galic, formerly the fame, but now different dialects of the Celtic, retreated, the one into Wales, and the other into the Highlands and western parts of Scotland. At the revival of letters, and afterwards at the Reformation in religion, the Galic, being unfortunately the provincial language of but a part of Scotland, and having ceafed to be fashionable at court, did not partake of the advantages that other languages derive from the invention of printing. Under thefe difadvantages, however, it ftill is fpoken with much purity, on a great part of the continent and islands of Scotland, and exifts, at this day, one of the greatest living monuments of antiquity. The human mind, with great longing, looks back into the past, lefs interested in many particulars of the prefent, which it overlooks, and of the future, which it enquires not after. The actions and connections, the fortune and habitations of our anceftors, the fields they walked on, their prudent conduct, and even foibles, we delight to hear recited, with an interested attention. The fields on which Cæfar, Alexander, and Fingal fought their battles ; the |