Ossian Collection > Essay on the authenticity of the poems of Ossian

44 ON THE AUTHENTICITY
different department assigned to them. Is
it not probable, then, that the latter were
expressly prohibited from encroaching upon
the province of their superiors, by inter-
mingling religion, if they had any know-
ledge of its mysteries, which it is likely they
had not, with the secular subjects of their
song r
Thus, then, we seem warranted to con-
clude upon this subject : — By the time that
Ossian flourished, the higher order of this
hierarchy had been destroyed; and, in all
probability, the peculiar mysteries which
they taught had perished along with them :
and, even if any traces of them remained,
such is the force of habit, and the venera-
tion which men entertain for the institutions
in which they have been educated, that it is
no wonder that the bards religiously forbore
to tread on ground, from which they had,
at all times, by the most awfid sanctions,
been excluded.