the tidings of great joy' had reached our shores— ere the beautiful feet' of the MESSENGER had alighted on the blood-stained mountains. The learning and wisdom of the Druids have been largely descanted on; and there was certainly much to lay hold of the imagination in a cultivated mind, much to impress with awe and terror an ignorant one, in their religious solemnities. The deep, vast, and solemn groves in which these mysteries were celebrated; the circle of huge altar-stones, near each of which stood the attendant priest, ready to ignite the blue flame which at one and the same instant gleamed on all; the Arch-Druid, majestic in his gait, venerable in his appearance, waving the asphodel aloft near the mystical rocking-stone, or stabbing to the heart the noble milk-white bull, as a propitiatory sacrifice to an 'unknown god;' whilst circling around were priestly bands, sweeping their solemn harps Amid the hush of ages which are dead; 6 evoking triumphant strains which rang out gloriously to the skies, or chanting mournful dirges which stole tremulously along the forest glades, mingling with the pure and gentle breath of evening in a dying, dying fall'—all this is certainly beautiful as a picture; but it is only an attractive portal to the temple of a religion ruthless and cruel as bigotry and un tamed nature could devise.1 Not amongst these beguiling accessories were maxims of peace, of charity, of brotherly kindness taught to the living; nor a future hope breathed in the stricken ear of the mourner; or a message of pardon and peace whispered to soothe the agony of the dying. The poor man, without future hope or death-bed prayer Unshriven, unanointed, unaneled was buried with scant ceremony in a shroud of woollen fastened with a wooden pin, in a hole dug by the side of a hill, or on a waste plot; while a little mound of soil or turf was heaped upon the spot, or perhaps some common stones-the commonest and smallest of barrows. When a person of more consequence died, his 1 The Druids made the people pass through fire in honour of Beal; and they offered up the life of man in sacrifice, saying that when the victim was smitten with a sword, they could discover events which were to come, by the manner in which he fell, and the flowing of his blood, and the quivering of his body in the act of death. 'On greater occasions, a huge figure, in the rude likeness of man, was made of wicker-work and filled with men; as many as were condemned to death for their offences were put into it; but if these did not suffice to fill the image, the innocent were thrust in, and they surrounded it with straw and wood, and set fire to it, and consumed it, with all whom it contained.' horse and favourite domestic animals, and perhaps, too, his servants, were burnt round his funeral pyre. The remains were buried in a stone chest or kistvean (many of which have been found in Britain), which was composed of five large flat stones, the fifth forming the lid. Sometimes this was placed upon a hill or barrow; very frequently a hill or barrow was built over it, made of earth, with large stones set round about. Kings and nobles were distinguished by a barrow of greater height and larger dimensions, often surmounted by a monument of one enormous flat stone raised on three or four upright ones. Hubba, the Dane, was buried under a very large barrow in Devonshire. We are told of another Dane who employed his whole army, and a number of oxen, to place an immense stone on the tumulus of his mother. There are large numbers of barrows scattered over England, and especially clustered in Wiltshire. A great many have been opened; some containing unburnt skeletons, others such as have evidently undergone the action of fire. Besides human remains, there have been found animals of all sorts, from the skeleton of a horse to that of a fowl; all imaginable warlike instruments, domestic utensils, or ornamental trifles, from a battle-spear or a pole-axe to a bit of amber or a row of glass beads-from an iron torques or a silver or gold bracelet to an ivory hook or a crystal ball. The traveller to the Lakes, passing over Dunmail Rise, the desolate frontier of Cumberland and Westmoreland, is reminded (or used to be, before the era of railroads) of the death-place and burial-cairn of the last king of Cumberland. For here, more than a thousand years ago, Dun Mail, with all his peerage, fell; and here was a huge barrow raised over their remains. But happy are we to turn from these slight though most painful memorials of heathenism, to that longpredicted period when the Day-Star from on high beamed over the earth, and the mild rays of Christian hope penetrated the darkness and gloom which had theretofore shrouded the borders of the grave. CHAPTER II. CHRISTIAN BURIAL. They have not perished-no! And features, the great soul's apparent seat- Of pure affection shall be knit again; Alone shall evil die. S the natural impulse of humanity is to look, not merely with mournful awe, but with dread and horror, to death and the grave, it is not easy for us who have the privilege to be born under Christianity, to estimate the feelings of those by whom its revelations were unexpected and undreamt of. The sudden noise of gushing waters to the parched and fainting wanderer in African deserts could hardly come with a more reviving sound physically, than did, mentally and spiritually, the tidings of redemption and release, and new and eternal life, to the worn and weary slaves of paganism. The sudden blaze of a comet on the dazzled eye of the scientific inquirer who had been for months and years in doubting search after it, is but a poor type for the delight of the earnest, thoughtful, philosophical |