Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 4.djvu/355

 a very remote origin. The largest and western tower is called the Cummin's tower. The name however is not of itself sufficient to prove that this castle appertained to the Cummins, or that it was erected by that once formidable Clan, whose ancient fame and power have, like those of Fingal himself, associated its name with buildings and transactions in which it might have been no way concerned: yet its aspect would not induce us to refer to it to a date higher than that of Edward I. the period in which the power of that clan was in its greatest splendour. There is an idle tradition that it had been a seat of Bancho, head of the race of Stuarts, and that a league had been signed there by Charlemagne and Achaius about the end of the eighth century. But authentic records show that Bancho was not the ancestor of the Stuart family; nor was it possible that Bancho, had he existed, could have been a Thane of Lochaber; since that district was not at this remote period under the dominion of the kings of Scotland. The history of Achaius and his treaty with Charlemagne, so far from being merely involved in obscurity, has been shown by learned antiquaries to be a fiction.

So far do the arguments from tradition reach. Let us next enquire, tradition apart, whether there is any thing either in the physical construction, the disposition, the antiquity, or the alledged uses of these lines, which can justify the supposition that they are works of art. The magnificence of the object itself, when considered as a work of art, is such as to impose on the judgment by heating the imagination; and it is not therefore wonderful that such a notion should have been maintained with considerable pertinacity by remote highlanders, whose traditional belief in the power and splendour of their heroic ancestors, although fast expiring, is by no means entirely obliterated. But the phenomenon is of too