ber must have been very considerable. They were clothed in white, for which colour they, in common with most of the ancients, had a high veneration*. Their head was adorned with a diadem, or tiara, and they had the privilege of wearing six colours in their robes as a badge of honour. The class of nobility wore only five, and the royal family seven. Their shoes were of a singular shape, made of wood, of a pentagonal form. The insignia of their order was the figure of the serpent's egg. The crescent was also figured on their garments. The aged Druids had very long beards, and sometimes a wreath of oak round their temples. Their garments were long and flowing, and generally their eyes were pensively fixed on the ground. Their manner was solemn and dignified, and in their hand they carried the magic rod.

The Druids were the first and most distinguished order among the ancient Britons. Besides being the repositories of knowledge, they had the administration of all sacred things. The laws were considered, not as the decrees of their princes, but as the commands of their gods, which the priestly order alone could declare and explain. The violations of the laws were viewed as sins against heaven, consequently the Druids, as the ministers of heaven, assumed the right of taking vengeance. All these important prerogatives of declaring, explaining, and executing the laws, the Druids enjoyed and exercised in their full extent. They assumed the right to pronounce the sentence of excommunication, or interdict all persons, or whole tribes, when they refused to submit to their decrees. Possessed of this terrible engine of power, they experienced an unlimited degree of authority. They constantly attended the armies, and the princes could not give battle till the priests had performed their auguries, and declared that they were favourable.

We

may reasonably imagine that the Druids derived a considerable revenue from the exercise of their prerogatives. Besides the rents of the holy territories, the devoted spoils of war, and occasional gifts and rewards, we are also traditionally informed, that there were certain dues, or tythes, exacted from every family by the priests of their district. These artful priests had invented a most effectual method to secure the punctual payment of this tax. All families were obliged, under the dreadful penalties of excommunication, to extinguish their fires on the last evening of October, and to attend at the temple of their district with their annual payment, on the first day of November, to receive some of the sacred fire from the altar, to rekindle those in their houses. By this device they were obliged to pay, or be deprived of the use of fire during the approaching winter. If any neighbour out of compassion supplied them with fire, or even conversed with them in their state of delinquency, they were subjected to the same terrible sentence of excommunication. Adverting to these several sources of revenue, it would seem that the British Druids were the most opulent, as well as the most venerated body of men in the country, in the time in which they flourished.†

Pythagoras advised that sacrificers should address the gods, not in rich and gaudy habits, but only in white and clean robes. The Egyptian priests were always clothed in white linen; so were the Persian magi and kings. The Jews had their white ephod; and the Gauls used to carry in procession round their lands their idols covered with white linen.-Frag. of Diod. Sicul. Hyde de Relig. vet. Pers. p. 20. Rel. des Gaul

p. 104.

+ Cæsar de Bel. Gal, lib. i. c. 13. Æl. Var. Hist. lib, ii. c. 31. Toland's Hist. of the Druids, p. 71.

Physiology, or the philosophy of nature, formed the basis of the British religion, and was the favourite study of the Druids. They believed, according to Strabo, that the universe was never to be entirely destroyed or annihilated, but was to undergo the succession of great changes and revolutions, which were to be produced sometimes by the power and predominancy of water, and sometimes by that of fire. Their sentiments concerning the eternity of matter, and the present disposition of the universe, were expressed in a dark, figurative, and enigmatical manner. Their belief in the spherical form of the earth may be proved from a variety of circumstances.* Astronomy also constituted one of their chief studies, and they appear to have cultivated the science with considerable success. Their circumstances indeed were peculiarly favourable to the pursuit of this knowledge: the sun and moon, and perhaps the planets, were the great objects of their adoration, and therefore attracted their frequent attention. Cæsar affirms that the British Druids had many disquisitions concerning the heavenly bodies and their motions; and Mela suggests, that they rendered this knowledge highly subservient to their interests, by pretending to the art of discovering the councils and designs of the gods, from the motions and aspects of the heavens and of the stars.

The Druids computed their time by nights, and not by days. In this they were confirmed by their measuring time very much by the moon, the empress and the queen of the night. By the age and aspect of the moon they regulated all their great solemnities, both sacred and civil. Their time was divided into months, or revolutions of the moon; and the larger division of time, called a year, consisted of 12 lunations, or 354 days, which was the most ancient measure of the year in all nations, The Druids were physicians as well as priests. When any person of distinction was afflicted with a dangerous disease, he was requested to sacrifice a man for his recovery; because they insisted that the anger of the immortal gods (to whom they imputed various diseases) could not be appeased, so as to spare the life of one man, but by the life of another. Hence their medical practices were attended with a great number of magical rites and incantations. Their materia medica seems to have consisted only of a few herbs, which were believed to have certain salutary and healing virtues. Pliny mentions several herbs of whose sanative qualities they entertained a high opinion. From the imperfect hints pertaining to this subject that have been collected, it has been inferred, that for the age in which they lived, these priests were no contemptible botanists.

* Cicero de Div. lib. i. Diod. Sic. lib. v. c. 91. Strabo, lib. iv. Mela, lib. iii. c. 12. Ammien Marcell, lib. xv. c. 9.

✦ Mr. Rowland mentions a place situated on the summit of a hill in the isle of Anglesey, which is called "Cerrig-Brudyn," i. e. the Astronomers' Stones, or Circle. This is undoubtedly the remains of a Druidical observatory.-Mona. Antiq. p. 85.

The ancients believed that night was before day, or light; and Orpheus calls night the mother of all things. The custom of reckoning time by nights still prevails in England. The space of seven days we call a se'ennight, and the space of fourteen days we call a fortnight, or fourteennight.

The Druids, in order to support and advance their reputation, assiduously studied the art of rhetoric. They, indeed, had many opportunities of exercising their eloquence while they taught their disciples in the schools; when they discoursed in public to the people on subjects of religion and morality; when they pleaded causes in the courts of justice;* and when they argued in the great councils of the nation, and at the head of the armies ready to engage in battle, sometimes for inflaming their courage, and at other times for allaying their fury, and disposing them to peace. Such was the effect of their eloquence, that it engaged respect both from friends and enemies. Accordingly, the British kings and chieftains who were educated by the Druids, were famous for their eloquence.†

The academies of the Druids were usually situated in the deepest recesses of woods, near some noted temple, where the learned professors delivered their lectures to their pupils. These lectures were all in verse, after the example of the most ancient nations, and a Druidical course of education, containing the whole circle of sciences that were then taught, is said to have consisted of about 20,000 verses, and to have lasted, in some cases, 20 years. The scholars were not allowed to commit any of these verses to writings, but were obliged to get them all by heart. When the youths were first admitted into these academies, they were compelled to submit to certain oaths and other initiatory ceremonies. They constantly resided with their teachers and fellowstudents, and were forbidden to converse with any other person, till they were regularly dismissed. So highly were the Druids of Britain famed for their talents and probity, that the noble youths of Gaul were placed under their tuition. Notwithstanding the doubts that have been advanced on the subject, it is sufficiently evident that the more learned Druids knew, and in some cases used, the letters of the Greek alphabet. These priests were also much addicted to magic and divination, which they cultivated with such astonishing success, that, according to Pliny, they seemed capable of instructing even the Persians themselves in these arts. So famous were they for the supposed veracity of their predictions, that they were not only consulted on all important occasions by their own princes and great men, but even sometimes by the Roman emperors.

Agreeably to the practice of the other priests of antiquity, the Druids had two sets

* Some distinct points in the modern doctrines of our English law have a striking affinity to the Druidical tenets. The notion of an oral, unwritten law, which, in its principle, is the common law of England, is fairly referable to a British original. So is the custom of Gavel-kind, which exists in the county of Kent and some other parts, and which admits that the tenant is of age sufficient to alienate his estate by feoffment at fifteen, and that the estate does not escheat in case of attainder and execution for felony, according to an ancient maxim, "the father to the bough, and the son to the plough." By this tenure also, the lands descend not by right of primogeniture, but to all the sons together. The present mode of dividing the goods of an intestate between his widow and children, or next of kin, is a revival of the ancient Celtic law.-Blackstone's Comment. vol. ii. p. 84. Seld. Analect. lib. ii. c. 7. Lamb. Peramb. 614 and 634.

+ Mela de Situ Orbis, lib. iii. c. 2. Lucian in Hercule Gallico.

The same custom was recommended and practised by Pythagorus, Lycurgus, and Socrates, and other enlightened philosophers among the ancients.

of doctrines, one of which was made public, and calculated to raise a terrific train of phantasies for the delusion and amusement of the imagination; and another, which they communicated only to the initiated, and which they studiously concealed from the rest of mankind. Their public theology consisted of mythological fables, concerning the genealogies, attributes, offices, and actions of their gods, and the various superstitious methods of appeasing their anger, gaining their favour, and discovering their will. With this fabulous divinity they intermixed moral precepts. The great objects of their order were, according to themselves, "to reform morals, to secure peace, and to encourage goodness." The primary lesson they taught was certainly conducive to these ends: "The first true principles of wisdom are, obedience to the laws of God, concern for the good of man, and fortitude under the accidents of life."* The secret doctrines of the Druids perished with that order. However, the immortality of the soul seems to have been one doctrine, which, for political reasons, they were permitted to publish. It was, indeed, a powerful engine in the hands of the priesthood. It inspired the weak with firmness and intrepidity; it animated the servant to die with his master-the wife to follow her deceased husband-the old and decrepid to precipitate themselves from rocks, or to mount with cheerfulness their own funeral pile; it reconciled the devoted victim to become a sacrifice—the creditor to postpone his demands till the next life-and the man of business became thereby contented to dispatch letters to his correspondents, by throwing them into the funeral pile of some dead acquaintance. According to Cæsar, and Diodorus Siculus, the Druids taught the Pythagorian doctrine of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls into other bodies; but some writers contend, that this opinion was only partially received by the British priests, and represent them as teaching, that the soul after death ascended to some higher orb, and enjoyed a more sublime felicity.t

The sun, the most ancient and universal object of idolatrous worship, received the homage of the ancient Britons under the names of Bel, Belinus, Apollo, &c. which names were expressive in their language of the nature and properties of that visible fountain of light and heat. To this illustrious object of idolatrous worship those famous circles of stones, several of which remain, seem to have been chiefly dedicated, where the priests kept the sacred fire, the symbol of this divinity. The moon also, as before observed, obtained a large share of the idolatrous worship of the ancient Britons. The god Hesus (a word expressive of omnipotence) presided over war and armies, and was the same with Mars. He was a favourite with this warlike people. Teutatis was the sovereign of the infernal world, the genius of evil, and was worshipped in such a manner as would be agreeable to none but an infernal power. Taranis, the god of thunder, was worshipped by very inhuman rites. The Britons likewise adored several demi-gods, or deified mortals, who had been victorious princes, wise legislators, or inventors of useful arts. Woods, waters, fires, and rocks, were also the objects of adoration.

These two triads may be seen in Davis (Celt. Researches, 181, 182). The latter had been translated by Diogenes Laertius (in Proem, p. 5) many centuries ago.

+ Cluver. Germ. Ant. p. 219. Rel. de Gaul, vol. ii. Diog. Laert. de Druid. Borlase's Cornwall, p. 50-80.

The Druids were perfectly skilled in the art of exciting that awful solemnity and religious horror, which subdues the soul and extends the empire of superstition. Their worship consisted of songs of praise and thanksgiving, prayers and supplications, offerings and sacrifices, and the various rites of augury and divination. Human victims constituted a part of their sacrifices; the altars streamed with human blood, and great numbers of wretched men fell victims to a barbarous superstition. Criminals were sacrificed in the first instance; but when there was a scarcity of these, innocent persons supplied their place. These dreadful sacrifices were offered at the eve of a dangerous war, or in a time of any national calamity, and also for persons of high rank, when they were afflicted with any dangerous disease. They were not, as has been pretended, merely acts of public justice. In fact, the more virtuous and beloved was the victim, the more acceptable they accounted the offering. Hence, even princes and the most noble youths were occasionally devoted to their gods; and to reconcile such victims to their fate, the Druids taught that their souls were translated into the immediate presence of the immortal gods. On these occasions, the victim was led into the depth of a wood, that the gloom might add to the horror of the operation, and give a reverence to the cruel proceedings, where, certain rites being performed, the wretched man was cut in two across the diaphragm, and the priests drew their predictions (such erudition there is in butchery) from the position in which he fell, the course of the blood, and the quivering motion of the members. But the cruel ingenuity of the priests devised various modes of sacrificing their victims. While the votive blood flowed, and the sacrifice was consuming, the groans of the victims were not heard amid the clangour of musical instruments. After this horrid rite was performed, the priests prayed most solemnly to the gods, with uplifted hands and fervent zeal, and the horrid tragedy generally closed with a scene of riotous drunkenness.†

The Britons were not singular in these barbarous practices. In early ages, most nations were guilty of this species of cruelty. It proceeded from a mistaken notion of the Deity, formed on the scale of human feelings, by the worst and most tyrannous of mankind. Accordingly, the Massagetæ, the Scythians, the Getes, the Sarmatians, and all the various nations upon the Baltic, particularly the Sueir and Scandinavians,

* Rel. de Gaul. vol. ii. p. 226.

+ The Britons brought their women naked to these sacrifices, and, from the mad intemperance which ensued, it has been presumed that the part they bore in the subsequent rites was neither chaste nor delicate. This, however, is no argument against the general continency of the British ladies. Even the jealous Egyptians, on certain occasions, permitted their women to devote their persons at the temples. The Jewish females adored the "Queen of heaven” in a similar manner. The prophet Jeremiah, in the epistle of Baruch, ascribed to him, says, it was the custom for all the young virgins of Babylonia, when they arrived at maturity, to sit in the avenue of the temple, with a girdle round the middle, until a stranger led them away to a place of privacy. Upon her return she upbraided her neighbours for not being thought worthy of the like honour. This account is confirmed by the testimony of Herodotus. A similar custom prevailed in Persia and Cyprus. In Armenia, it is a religious institution, writes Strabo, that all young virgins should, in honour of the goddess, be prostituted in the temple, after which they are permitted to be given in marriage. In fact, prostitution seems anciently to have formed a part of the religion of almost all nations.-Baruck, c. Herod. lib. i. c. 199. Strabo, lib, ü. p. 805. Jer. c. xiv. v. 18, 19.

v. v. 43.