Blair Collection > Celtic gleanings, or, Notices of the history and literature of the Scottish Gael

LECTURE III. 105
sphere is a solid body, having a surface all round
a point within, through which all lines pass
down from point to point in the surface, which
point is called the centre ; and the line drawn
through the centre to the surface in both direc-
tions is called the axle of the sphere ; and the
two points in which the axle terminates are
called the poles, as of the earth," &c.). This
little volume is full of similar passages, chiefly
like those, composed of quotations from the
schoolmen of the Continent, but containing also
comments of the writer liimself. The quota-
tions are usually in Latin ; but there are Gaelic
translations, and the comments are all in Gaelic.
But what is worthy of notice, and creditable to
the scholarship of Ireland and the Scottish
Highlands at an early period, is, that at the
time when Latin was the only language of the
learned throughout the rest of Europe, there
the vernacular of the peoj)le — that language
which has been held up as the rude speech of a
barbarous people — was used in discussing scien-
tific subjects in a way altogether worthy of the
state of science at the time. We have been so
accustomed to associate the past history of the
Highlands with the feuds and squabbles, the
raids and murders, of a barbarous people, that
we are apt to forget that there were any in-