Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/43

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INTRODUCTION.
xli

be part of one of those helmets described by Diodorus Siculus, writing a few years after Cæsar's conquest of Gaul, as worn by the Celts. Further, Dr. Wylie, in his lately published History of the Scottish Nation, says of this prehistoric art, "From the simplest elements it evolved effects of the most exquisite grace and beauty. It was unique. Celtic hands only knew to create it, and on none but Celtic soil did it flourish." In the sixth century, indeed, the Celtic art-faculty, as witnessed by its relics, had developed marvellous perfection. Westwood, in his Palæographia Pieta, declares "there was nothing analogous to it either of a contemporary or an earlier date in the art of Byzantium or Italy." To this testimony might be added the description of Caledonian towns, quite considerable places, by the geographer Ptolemy in the second century. Early Celtic remains of another kind are the "Auld Wives' Lifts" on Craigmaddie moor, near Glasgow, and other ponderous cromlechs; also such formidable fortresses as that on the White Caterthun in Forfarshire, with Craig-Phadric near Inverness; the latter, as Hill Burton shows, being the place at which Columba visited the king of the Picts. The erection of any one of these would be an undertaking of great difficulty even with the aid of modern appliances. Art of such