ous ceremonies were not long ago still generally some parts of England the practice still prevails performed' In Scotland a sort of sacrifice was of lighting fires in parishes on Midsummer Eve. Another of the most remarkable principles of primitive Druidism appears to have been the worship of the serpent; a superstition so widely extended, as to evince its derivation from the most ancient traditions of the human race. Pliny has given us a curious account of the anguinum, or serpent's egg, which he tells us was worn as their distinguishing badge by the Druids. He had himself seen it, he says, and it was about the bigness of an apple, its shell being a cartilaginous incrustation, full of little cavities, like those on the legs of the polypus. Marvels of all kinds were told of this production. It was said to be formed, at first, by a great number of serpents twined together, whose hissing at last raised it into the air, when it was to be caught, ere it fell to the ground, in a clean white cloth, by a person mounted on a swift horse, who had immediately to ride off at full speed, the enraged serpents pursuing him until they were stopped (as witches still are supposed to be, in the popular faith) by a running water. If it were genuine it would, when enchased in gold, and thrown into a river, swim against the stream. All the virtues also of a charm were ascribed to it. In particular, the person who carried it about with him was insured with the worship of fire, probably from Benledi having been specially consecrated to it. So late as in 1826, an old farmer in that county, who had lost several cattle by an epidemic disease, was persuaded, by a weird sister in his neighbourhood, to try the effect of a lustration of the survivors, by making them pass through the flame of a fire kindled in the barnyard by friction.-(See the Mirror for June, 1826, quoted by Kemble.) Road to Shrewton and Heylesbury GROUND PLAN OF STONEHENGE."-From Sir R. Colt Hoare's Ancient Wiltshire. offered up, and one of the persons present, upon whom the lot fell, leaped three times through the flames of the fire. In Ireland the cottagers all drove their cattle through the fire. Even in stones, which were on an average 86 ft. apart from each other in their linear direction. The outer oval of the terminating temple to the south-east, on an eminence called Overton Hill, or the Hackpen, measured about 146 ft. in diameter; the inner oval was 45 ft. across. The western avenue extended about one mile and a half, and consisted of 203 stones; its extremity ended in a point with a single stone. Those avenues were formed in curved lines, and, according to Dr. Stukeley's theory, were intended to represent or typify the figure of the serpent. This vast work is surrounded by numerous tumuli, cromlechs, and ancient trackways, over which rises the lofty cone of Silbury Hill. The great earthen mound of Avebury now contains a village, with its fields and appurtenances, and its original figure is not to be made out by the present vestiges. Aubrey (A.D. 1663) makes out sixty-three stones as remaining within the intrenched inclosure in his time; these were reduced to twentynine, when Stukeley made his survey; and in 1812, when Sir R. Colt Hoare described it, only seventeen stones remained. Two upright stones of the western avenue remain, and about sixteen of those of the southern avenue. 2 The site of Stonehenge, the plain of Sarum, is on a platform of undulating downs, about six miles from Salisbury. The structure consists of two circles and two ovals, composed of huge stones, uprights and imposts. The outer or largest circle is 105 ft. in diameter, and between that and the interior smaller circle is a space of about 9 ft. Within this smaller circle, which is half the height (8 ft.) of the exterior one, was a portion of an ellipse formed by five groups of stones, which have been called trilithons, because formed by two vertical and one horizontal stone. Within this ellipse is another of single stones, half the height of the trilithons. The outer circle was originally composed of thirty upright stones, at nearly equal distances apart, sustaining as many stones in a horizontal position, forming a continuous impost. The inner circle consisted of about the same number of upright stones of smaller size, and without imposts. Within the inner elliptical inclosure was a block of stone 16 ft. long, 4 ft. broad, and 20 in. thick. This has been usually called the altar stone. Round the larger circle, and at the distance of 100 ft., was a vallum 52 ft. in width, and 15 ft. in height. "The needfire, nydfyr, New German nothfeuer, was called, from the mode of its production, confrictione de lignis; and though probably common to the Kelts as well as Teutons, was long and well known to all the Germanic races at a certain period. All the fires in the village were to be relighted from the virgin flame produced by the rubbing together of wood; and in the Highlands of Scotland and Ireland, it was usual to drive the cattle through it, by way of lustration, and as a preservative against disease."-Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. ii. p. 360, where a curious illustration of the subject is given, from an ancient English MS. Perthshire seems to have retained most pertinaciously the old superstitions connected 3 See Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 105, vol. v. p. 84, and vol. xi. p. 620; Vallancey's Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language, p. 19; and Brande's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 238, &c. against being overcome in any dispute in which he might engage. and might count upon success in his attempts at obtaining the favour and licarnassus affirm to have been also adored by the Celtic nations. Bacchus, Ceres, Proserpine, Diana, and other gods of Greece and Rome, also VIEW OF STONEHENGE.-From Higgins' Celtic Druids. appear to have all had their representatives in the Druidical worship; if, indeed, the classic theology did not borrow these divinities from the Celts. Another of the Celtic gods was Taranis, whose name signifies the god of thunder. The earliest Druidism seems, like the kindred superstition of Germany, as described by Tacitus, to have admitted neither of covered temples nor of sculptured images of the gods. Jupifriendship of the great. It has been conjectured, ter, indeed, is said to have been represented by a on highly probable grounds, that the massive lofty oak, and Mercury by a cube-the similarity Druidical temples of Avebury, of Stonehenge, of that geometrical figure on all sides typifying of Carnac in Brittany, and most of the others that remain both in Britain and Gaul, were dedicated to the united worship of the sun and the serpent, and that the form of their construction is throughout emblematical of this combination of the two religions.' But however comparatively simple and restricted may have been the Druidical worship in its earliest stage, there is sufficient evidence that, at a later period, its gods came to be much more numerous. Cæsar, as we have already seen, mentions among those adored by the Gauls, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. It is to be regretted that the historian did not give us the Celtic names of the deities in question, rather than the Roman names, which he considered, from the similarity of attributes, to be their representatives. Livy, however, tells us that the Spanish Celts called Mercury Teutates; the same word, no doubt, with the Phoenician Taaut, and the Egyptian Thoth, which are stated by various an GAULISH DEITIES, from Roman bas-reliefs under the choir of cient writers to be the same with the Hermes of 1 See on this subject a curious dissertation, by the Rev. B. Deane, in the Archæologia, vol. xxv. (for 1834) pp. 188-229. 2 Philobiblius ex Sanconiath.-Cic. de Nat. D. iii. 22. NOLCANVS IOVIS GAULISH DEITIES, from Roman bas-reliefs under the choir of that perfect truth and unchangeableness which As for the human sacrifices of which Cæsar speaks, his account is fully borne out by the testimonies of various other ancient authors. Strabo describes the image of wicker or straw, in which, he says, men and all descriptions of cattle and beasts were roasted together. He also relates that sometimes the victims were crucified, sometimes shot to death with arrows. The statement of Diodorus Siculus is, that criminals were kept under ground for five years, and then offered up as sacrifices to the gods, by being impaled, and burned in great fires along with quantities of other offerings. He adds, that they also immolated the prisoners they had taken in war, and along with them devoured, burned, or in some other manner destroyed, likewise, whatever cattle they had taken from their enemies. Plutarch tells us that the noise of songs and musical instruments was employed on these occasions to drown the cries of the sufferers.' Pliny is of opinion that a part of every human victim was eaten by the Druids; but what reason he had for thinking so does not appear, nor does the supposition seem to be probable in itself. Upon the subject of the practice of human sacrifice it has been observed, that "if we rightly consider this point we shall perceive that, shocking as it is, it is yet a step towards the humanizing of savages; for the mere brute man listens only to his ferocious passions and horrid appetites, and slays and devours all the enemies he can conquer; but the priest, persuading him to select only the best and bravest as sacrifices to his protecting deity, thereby, in fact, preserves numberless lives, and puts an end to the cannibalism which has justly been looked upon as the last degradation of human nature." 2 of Pythagoras hath decreed," are his words." Others affirm that the Grecian philosopher derived his philosophy from the Druids. A report is preserved, by Clement of Alexandria, that Pythagoras, in the course of his travels, studied under both the Druids and the Brahmins. The probability is that both Pythagoras and the Druids drew their philosophy from the same fountain. Several of the ablest and most laborious among the modern investigators of the subject of Druidism have found themselves compelled to adopt the theory of its Oriental origin. Pelloutier, from the numerous and strong resemblances presented by the Druidical and the old Persian religion, concludes the Celts and Persians, as Mr. O'Brien has lately done, to be the same people, and the Celtic tongue to be the ancient Persic. The late Mr. Reuben Burrow, distinguished for his intimate acquaintance with the Indian astronomy and mythology, in a paper in the Asiatic Researches, decidedly pronounces the Druids to have been a race of emigrated Indian philosophers, and Stonehenge to be evidently one of the temples of Buddha. Some of the Welsh antiquaries have. MALABAR TOLMEN."-From Higgins' Celtic Druids. The origin of Druidism, and its connection with other ancient creeds of religion and philosophy, have given occasion to much curious speculation. Diogenes Laertius describes the Druids as holding the same place among the Gauls and Britons with that of the Philosophers among the Greeks, of the Magi among the Persians, of the Gymnosophists among the Indians, and of the Chaldeans among the Assyrians. He also refers to Aristotle as affirming, in one of his lost works, that philosophy had not been taught to the Gauls by the Greeks, but had originated among the former, and, from them, had passed to the latter. The introduction into the Greek philosophy of the doctrine of the Metempsychosis is commonly attributed to Pythagoras; and there are various passages in ancient authors which make mention of, or allude to some connection between that philosopher and the Druids. Abaris, the Hyperborean, is by many supposed to have been a Druid; and he, Iamblicus tells us, was taught by Pytha- Cornwall, ch. xxii.: "Of the Great Resemblance betwixt the goras to find out all truth by the science of numbers. Marcellinus, speaking of the conventual associations of the Druids, expresses himself as if he conceived that they so lived in obedience to the commands of Pythagoras; "as the authority on other grounds, brought their assumed British ancestors from Ceylon, the great seat of Buddhism. This question has been examined at great length, in a Dissertation on the Origin of the Druids, by Mr. Maurice, who, considering the Buddhists to 4 Ammian. Marcell. xv. 9. 5 Strom. i. 35. 6 Histoire des Celtes, p. 19. See also Borlase's Antiquities of Druid and Persian Superstition, and the Cause of it inquired into." 7 Asiatic Researches, ii. 488. 8 The similarity of remains found in parts of India, Persia, Palestine, &c., to those of Druidical character still existing in this country, tends strongly to confirm the hypothesis of the Eastern origin of Druidism. The above representation of a tolmen in Malabar is taken by Higgins from Sir R. Colt Hoare, who has omitted to state his authority, but the author of the Celtic Druids quotes it, remarking that from Sir Richard's care and acumen, he is persuaded that it is given upon sufficient grounds. in the course of the preceding narrative, how it was extirpated from its chief seat in the south of Britain by Suetonius Paulinus. Such of the Druids as survived this attack are supposed to have fled to the Isle of Man, which then became, in place of Anglesey, the head-quarters of British Druidism. It was probably after this that the Druidical religion penetrated to the northern parts of the island. The vestiges, at all events, of its establishment at some period in Scotland, are spread over many parts of that country, and it has left its impression in various still surviving have been a sect of the Brahmins, comes to the conclusion that "the celebrated order of the Druids, anciently established in this country, were the immediate descendants of a tribe of Brahmins situated in the high northern latitudes bordering on the vast range of Caucasus; that these, during a period of the Indian empire, when its limits were most extended in Asia, mingling with the Celto-Scythian tribes who tenanted the immense deserts of Grand Tartary, became gradually incorporated, though not confounded with that ancient nation; introduced among them the rites of the Brahmin religion, occasionally adopt-popular customs and superstitions. The number ing those of the Scythians; and, together with them, finally emigrated to the western regions of Europe." ן and variety of the Druid remains in North Britain, according to a late learned writer, are almost endless. The principal seat of Scottish Druidism is thought to have been the parish of Kirkmichael, in the recesses of Perthshire, near the great mountainous range of the Grampians.2 Druidism long survived, though in obscurity and decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. In Ireland, indeed, where the Roman arms had not penetrated, it continued to flourish down nearly to the middle of the fifth century, when it fell before the Christian enthusiasm and energy of St. Patrick. But even in Britain, the practice of the Druidical worship appears to have subsisted among the people long after the Druids, as an order of priesthood, were extinct. The annals of the sixth, seventh, and even of the eighth century, contain numerous edicts of em It must be confessed that the Druidical system, as established in Gaul and Britain, has altogether very much the appearance of something not the growth of the country, but superinduced upon the native barbarism by importation from abroad. The knowledge and arts of which they appear to | have been possessed, seem to point out the Druids as of foreign extraction, and as continuing to form the depositories of a civilization greatly superior to that of the general community in the midst of which they dwelt. It was quite natural, however, that Druidism, supposing it to have been originally an imported and foreign religion, should nevertheless gradually adopt some things from the idolatry of a different form which may have prevailed in Britain and Gaul previous to its in-perors, and canons of councils, against the wortroduction; just as we find Christianity itself to have become adulterated in some countries by an infusion of the heathenism with which it was brought into contact. The Germans, Cæsar expressly tells us, had no Druids; nor is there a vestige of such an institution to be discovered in the ancient history, traditions, customs, or monuments of any Gothic people. It was probably, indeed, confined to Ireland, South Britain, and Gaul, until the measures taken to root it out from the Roman dominions compelled some of the Druids to take refuge in other countries. The Emperor Tiberius, according to Pliny and Strabo, and the Emperor Claudius, according to Suetonius, issued decrees for the total abolition of the Druidical religion, on the pretext of an abhorrence of the atrocity of the human sacrifices in which it indulged its votaries. The true motive may be suspected to have been a jealousy of the influence, among the provincials of Gaul and Britain, of a native order of priesthood so powerful as that of the Druids. Suetonius, indeed, states that the practice of the Druidical religion had been already interdicted to Roman citizens by Augustus. We have seen, Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. part i. p. 18. ship of the sun, the moon, mountains, rivers, On the settlement of the Romans in Britain, the established religion of the province of course became the same classic superstition which these conquerors of the world still maintained in all its ancient honours and pre-eminence in their native Italy, which was diffused alike through all the customs of their private life and the whole system of their state-economy, and which they 2 Chalmers, i. pp. 69-78. 3 Pelloutier, Hist. des Celtes, iii. 4. carried with them, almost as a part of themselves, "An age hath been when earth was proud To be sustained; and mortals bowed The front in self-defence." while the sea assumed the colour of blood, and the receding tide seemed to leave behind it the phantoms of human carcasses. The picture is completed by the mention of the temple, in which the Roman soldiery took refuge on the rushing into the city of their infuriated assailants-of the undefended state of the place, in which the elegance of the buildings had been more attended to than their strength-of another temple which had been raised in it to Claudius the Divine-and, Beside the rude grandeur of Stonehenge, and surrounded and the air of our northern clime was peopled with all finally, of its crew of rapacious priests, who, under the pretence of religion, wasted every man's substance, and excited a deeper indignation in the breasts of the unhappy natives than all the other cruelties and oppressions to which they were subjected. One result of the Roman invasion was the introduction into Britain of the Christian faith. But the obscurity which pervades the ecclesiastical records of the first century, and the unobtrusive silence with whichthe first steps of Christianity were made, in REMAINS OF TEMPLE OF MINERVA, discovered at Bath in 1755, and preserved in Bath volve this part of the religious Museum.-Lyson's Reliquiæ Romanæ. history of Britain in much un the bright dreams and visions of the mythology certainty. Some investigators have attributed the of Greece. A temple of Minerva, and probably other sacred edifices, appear to have adorned the city of Bath; London is supposed to have had its temple of Diana, occupying the same natural elevation which is now crowned by the magnificent cathedral of St. Paul's; and the foundations and other remains of similar monuments of the Roman paganism have been discovered in many of our other ancient towns. But perhaps no such material memorials are so well fitted to strike the imagination, and to convey a lively impression of this long past state of things, as the passage in the Annals of Tacitus, in which we find a string of prodigies recounted to have happened in different parts of the province of Britain, immediately before the insurrection of Boadicea, just as the same events might have taken place in Italy, or in Rome itself. First, in the town of Camalodunum, the image of the goddess Victory, without any apparent cause, suddenly falls from its place, and turns its face round, as if giving way to the enemy. Then females, seized with a sort of prophetic fury, would be heard mournfully calling out that destruction was at hand, their cries penetrating from the streets both into the curia or council-chamber, and into the theatre. A representation, in the air, of the colony laid in ruins, was seen near the mouth of the Thames, VOL. I. RESTORATION BY SMIRKE OF PORTICO OF TEMPLE OF MINERVA, at Bath. From Lyson's Reliquiæ Romanæ. work of founding Christianity in Britain to St. Peter, to James the son of Zebedee, to Simon Ze 8 |