“It is a pleasure,” says Bacon, “to stand on the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventurers thereof below; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing on the vantage-ground of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings and mists and tempests, in the vale below; so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”
The very dresses, which adorn these venerable delineations, are enough to redeem them from the turpitude which Mr. P—— would impute to them. O’Connor and MacMurrough were, neither of them, on this earth, for at least two thousand years after these were in vogue! neither are they by any means the habits which P—— would persuade us that “laws were subsequently enacted to abolish as barbarous!”
Behold! I show you a mystery![387]
What do you see here?[388] What do you make of this Mr. P——. Or do you think that O’Connor went over into Nubia, and got the impress of his enormity canonised there also, in the form of a cross, within the temples and sanctuaries of the adoring Egyptians?
I copy this image from a work of great value, lately published in Paris by Monsieur Rifaud; which he designates by the title of Voyage en Egypte et en Nubie, et lieux circonvoisins. The plate under notice is but part of a larger one, which he describes as “Façade du petit temple de Kalabche (en Nubie) et ses détails intérieurs,” and of which I shall, by and by, treat you to two more compartments, as the exact correspondents of the six crowned figures at Knockmoy.
Meanwhile, I beg leave to introduce to you on the next page, some of the sculptures on the Tuath-de-danaan cross, at old Kilcullen, in the county of Kildare, Ireland. Here you distinguish nine Budhist priests in the Eastern uniform, with bonnet, tunic, and trouser—nay, with their very beards dressed after the Egyptian fashion.
Other figures I shall leave to your own research to unfold. But let me particularly fasten upon your faculty of comparing, the head-gear of the standing figure, in the second division, and that of the crucifixion upon the Nubian temple. Are they not critically, accurately, and identically the same?
Look next at the brute animals that take part in this group! Mind the grotesqueness of their positions, and the combination of their character with that of man! then lay your hand upon your breast, and, with the light now streaming in upon you, can you conscientiously believe that the cross which exhibits itself at the other side, was ever the work of Christianity?[389]
