In the meantime, by way of bringing our present argument to a point, would the reader believe that Macpherson, by whose text alone hitherto we have been guided, was himself more ignorant of these very scenes than a school boy; that he never, in fact, saw them, and did not know where, in Scotland or in Ireland, they were to be found? Yet such is the case. Of the Clyde, of which he could not help knowing something, he knew nevertheless very little--yet not much less than some of our modern geologists; but of localities on the Clyde, or between the Forth and the Clyde, as described in Ossian, he knew nothing. The Kelvin, in like manner, as an Ossianic river, was utterly unknown to him; he does not even attempt to translate its name. All that pertains to Arran, and still so distinctly traceable there by the help of his own text in _Berrathon_--for which Gaelic no longer exists--he transfers in his ignorance to the wilds of Morven. As for Ireland, all that he knows, or seems to know, is that Ullin is Ulster; but the very scenes which are most conspicuous in Ulster he transfers to Leinster--from Antrim, for example, to Meath; and the rest to some undistinguishable point between Londonderry and Armagh. He brings Sulmalla and her forefathers from Wales instead of Wigtonshire, into Wicklow instead of Ardglass; and he lands both Swaran and Cuchullin and Fingal in Lough Foyle apparently, instead of in the Bay of Larne or Belfast? In such circumstances, of what use is it for critics any longer to go on squabbling over Gaelic editions, collecting and collating mediæval Gaelic ballads, and asserting with hopeless fatuity that he was the author of these poems, or that he stole them from the Irish? The Irish themselves are as ignorant of the subject as he is; and yet in spite of all this ignorance on his part and theirs, the text of his translation has received on every page of it the unequivocal countersign of Nature, which can neither be forged nor forfeited. Taking all which into account, does it not now begin to be plain to unprejudiced readers that the whole of this Ossianic controversy has been hitherto on wrong ground; and that if the truth of it is to be arrived at, at all, it must be removed to other ground--from questionable MSS. and mediæval ballads, to the region of facts and the domain of reality? We do not assert that the sort of facts now adduced by us, and elsewhere systematised and elaborated, are the only facts, or the only kind of facts to be considered in such a controversy; but we do assert that their importance is supreme, and that they have never hitherto been admitted in the controversy. It is to facts however, and to facts like these, that the attention of Ossianic students ought now to be directed; and at every step, if we are not greatly deceived, they will multiply and reiterate their testimony in so decided a fashion, that it will be impossible for any critic, or for any collector in the world, to disregard or dispose of them. All farther serious controversy on the subject, in short, is destined to be of this character--common-sense and practical; and the sooner we prepare ourselves, as honest enquirers, to engage in it after this fashion and in this spirit, the better.