V.

which they observed any of the parasitical plant CHAP. (which they called all-healing), prepared a sacrifice and a feast under this venerated tree, and brought thither two white bulls, whose horns were then first tied. The officiating Druid, in a white garment, climbed the tree, and, with a golden knife, pruned off the misseltoe, which was received in a white woollen cloth below. They then sacrificed the victims, and addressed their gods to make the misseltoe prosperous to those to whom it was given; for they believed that it caused fecundity, and was an amulet against poison. They performed no ceremonies without the leaves of the oak. 26

THE ancient world, including the most enlightened nations, even Greece and Rome, were universally impressed with a belief of the powers of magic. But the expressions of Pliny induce us to imagine, that this mischievous imposture was peculiarly cultivated by the British Druids. He says, "Britain now celebrates it so astonishingly, and with so many ceremonies, that she might even be thought to have given it to the Persians." 27 The Druids were indeed so superior in knowledge and intellect to the rest of the nation, that their magical frauds must have been easily invented and securely practised.

26 Pliny, lib. xvi. c. 95. As derw is British for an oak, and derwydd is the term for a Druid in the same language, it is probable that this class of persons was named from the tree they venerated. Maximus Tyrius calls the oak, the Keltic image of the Deity. Dissert.

27 Pliny, lib. xxx. c. 4. The Welsh term for right-hand, seems to have some reference to the ancient superstitions of the Britons. It is deheulaw, or the south-hand; an expression which can only be true, when we look at the east. The circles at Stonehenge appear to have a reference to the rising of the sun at the solstice.

THE Druidical system began in Britain, and from thence was introduced into Gaul. In Cæsar's time, they who wished to know it more diligently, for the most part visited Britain, for the sake of learning it. The Druids were present at all religious rites; they administered at public and private sacrifices; and they interpreted divinations. They were so honoured, that they decided almost all public and private controversies, and all causes, whether of homicide, inheritance, or boundaries. They appointed the remunerations, and the punishments. Whoever disobeyed their decree, was interdicted from their sacrifices, which, with them, was the severest punishment. An interdicted person was deemed both impious and wicked; all fled from him, and avoided his presence and conversation, lest they should be contaminated by the intercourse. He was allowed no legal rights. He participated in no honours.

THE Druids obeyed one chief, who had supreme authority over them. At his death, he was succeeded by the next in dignity. If others had equal pretences, the suffrages of the Druids decided it; and sometimes arms determined the competition. 28

THE Druids had great privileges. They neither paid taxes, nor engaged in war. They were allowed exemption from warfare and all other offices. Excited by such advantages, many voluntarily submitted to the discipline, and others were sent by their friends and relations. They were said to

learn a great number of verses there; so that some remained twenty years under the education. They

28 Cæsar.

conceived it not lawful to commit their knowledge to writing, though in all other things they used Greek characters. Cæsar adds, that a great number of youth resorted to them for education.

THEY taught that souls never perished; but passed at death into other bodies and as this opinion removed the fear of death, they thought that it excited strongly to what they called virtue, of which valour was the most conspicuous quality. They discussed and taught also many things concerning the stars, and their motion; the size of the world, and its countries; the nature of things; and the force and power of the immortal gods.29 Such subjects of contemplation and tuition as these, shew a knowledge and an exerted intellect, that could not have been the natural growth of a people so rude as the Britons and Gauls. They must have derived both the information and the habit from more civilised regions. The Druidical order consisted of three sorts of men; Druids, Bards, and Ouates. The Bards were the poets and musicians, of whom some were satirists, and some encomiasts. The Ouates sacrificed, divined, and contemplated the nature of things. The Druids cultivated physiology and moral philosophy; or, as Diodorus says, were their philosophers and theologians.

30

Of the Druidical superstitions, we have no monuments remaining, unless the circles of stones, which are to be seen in some parts of the island, are deemed their temples. Of all the suppositions concerning Stonehenge and Avebury, it seems the

29 Cæsar. lib. vi. c. 13.

Mela, lib. iii. c. 20.; and see Lucan's celebrated verses on their theory of transmigration. 30 Diod. Sicul. lib. v. p. 308. Strabo, lib. iv. p. 302.

CHAP.

V.

BOOK

I.

31

most rational to ascribe them to the Druidical order; and of this system we may remark, that if it was the creature of a more civilised people, none of the colonisers of Britain are so likely to have been its parents, as the Phenicians and Carthaginians. The fact so explicitly asserted by Cæsar, that the Druidical system began in Britain, and was thence introduced into Gaul, increases our tendency to refer it to these nations. The state of Britain was inferior in civilisation to that of Gaul, and therefore it seems more reasonable to refer the intellectual parts of Druidism to the foreign visitors, who are known to have cultivated such subjects, than to suppose them to have originated from the rude unassisted natives.

31 Syria, Phenicia, and Palestine abound with many solid rocks and stony mountains cut into shapes, and excavated into chambers, and with erections of stones for the purposes of superstition. Mr. Watts' Views in Syria and Palestine, from the drawings in Sir Robert Ainslie's collection, exhibit some curious remains of this sort. Dr. Stukely, in his letter to Mr. Gale, in 1743, states, that he had found a Druidical Temple at Shap in Westmoreland. He says, " I have got a drawing and admeasurement of the stones of Shap. I find it to be another huge serpentine temple like that of Avebury. The measure of what are left extend to a mile and an half, but a great deal has been demolished." Reliq. Gal. p. 387. the "Gentleman's Magazine" for Feb. 1833 thinks right in calling the whole collection of stones a temple. Danish monument. It is a remarkable feature of Westmoreland and Cumberland, that their uncultivated hills and plains are scattered all over with Druidical remains, while in Northumberland and Durham, which adjoin them on the east, scarcely any thing of the kind exist." -A Dolman, or Druid's cave, near Saumur, in France, is described in "Six Weeks on the Loire."

A writer in Dr. Stukely "It is not a

CHAP. VI.

Invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar. Its final Conquest by the

Romans.

We

VI.

SUCH were the Britons whom Cæsar invaded. CHAP. After his conquest in Gaul, and an expedition into Germany, he resolved to visit Britain. need not ascribe this invasion to the British pearls, alluded to by Suetonius. The ambition of Cæsar, like that of all men of great minds, who have accomplished vast attempts, expanded with his successes. Accustomed to grand conceptions, and feeling from their experience of their own talents, and the abundance of their means, a facility of prosecuting the most capacious plans; it has been usual with conquerors, who have united sovereignty with their military triumphs, instead of enjoying their fame in peaceful repose, to dare new enterprises of danger and difficulty, and of mighty issue. Cæsar appears to have amused himself in forming great projects. He not only purposed to build a temple to Mars, whose magnitude was to surpass whatever the world had seen of religious architecture; to drain the Pomptine marshes; to make a highway through the Apeninnes, from the Adriatic to the Tiber; and to cut through the isthmus of Corinth but he had also a dream of subduing the Parthians on the Euphrates; of marching along the Caspian, and Mount Caucasus to the Euxine; of invading Scythia; from thence of penetrating

1 Suet. Vit. Cæs. s. 44.