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 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, show 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,

28 Cæsar.

29 Cæsar. lib. vi. c. 13. Mela, lib. iii. c. 20.; and see Lucan's celebrated verses on their theory of transmigration.

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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 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 Phoenicians and Carthaginians. 31 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 in 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.

30 Diod. Sicul. lib. v. p. 308. Strabo, lib. iv. p. 302.

31 Syria, Phoenicia, 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 letters 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 at Shap. I find it to be another huge serpentine temple like that of Avebury. The measure of what are left extends to a mile and a half, but a great deal has been demolished.". Reliq. Gal. p. 387. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1833, thinks Dr. Stukely right in calling the whole collection of stones a temple. "It is not a 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 anything of the kind exists. A Dolman, or Druid's Cave, near Saumur, in France, is described in "Six Weeks on the Loire."

CHAP. VI.

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

SUCH were the Britons whom Cæsar invaded. After his conquest in Gaul, and an expedition into Germany, he resolved to visit Britain. We 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 Pontine marshes; to make a highway through the Apennines, 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; and from thence of penetrating and conquering Germany; and from that country, of returning through Gaul, into Italy and Rome. 2 That

1 Suet. Vit. Cæs. s. 44.

Plut. Vit. Cæs.

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a mind, delighting to contemplate schemes so vast and extravagant, should not have reached the shores of Gaul, and surveyed the British island, then possessing the fame of being a new world, little known even to its Keltic neighbours as to its interior, without feeling the desire to explore it, was a natural event. Cæsar, under this impulse, collected the merchants of Gaul, who had been accustomed to visit the island; and inquired of them its size, what and how many nations inhabited it, their mode of warfare, their customs, and their harbours. Obtaining from those whom he questioned but scanty information, he sent one of his officers, in a vessel, to explore the coast, and collected all the ships, within his command, to make the exploring enterprise.

Some of the British states, hearing of his intentions from the Keltic merchants, sent envoys of peace.

His first expedition into Britain was to reconnoitre ; not to subdue. He was compelled to fight upon his landing, in the vicinity of Dover, because the Kentish Britons immediately opposed him conflicting even amidst the waves, with signal courage; and although Cæsar, observing his troops to be dispirited by the British attacks, ordered up the vessels with his artillery, and poured from their sides stones, arrows, and other missiles, yet the natives stood the unusual discharges with intrepidity, and he made no impression. It was the rushing forward, alone, of the bearer of the eagle of the tenth legion, exclaiming, "Follow me, unless you mean to betray your standard to your enemies," that roused the Roman legions to that desperate and closer battle, which at length forced back the Britons, and secured a landing. The Britons retired; and Cæsar did not pursue. The natives of the locality sent a message of peace; but four days afterwards, a tempest dispersing his fleet, they assaulted the Romans with new attacks. Cæsar re

pulsed them; but after this success he thought it expedient, without advancing, to quit the island suddenly at midnight. He ascribes his departure to the approach of the autumnal equinox; but he knew of this event before his landing. The truth seems to be that he found his present force, though sufficient to repel the Britons, yet incompetent to subdue them.3

His next invasion, in the ensuing summer, was more formidable. It was made with five well appointed legions, and two thousand cavalry—a force of thirty thousand of the best disciplined troops then known, under the ablest commander. As the Britons did not contest the landing, it was easily effected. On this visit he quitted the coasts, and marched twelve miles into the island. There he repulsed an attack. A storm again shattering his fleet, he stopped his advance, and returned to the coast, to provide for the safety of his ships. Ten days afterwards he resumed his former position, and was immediately assaulted by some of the British tribes, who had confederated under the temporary command of Cassivellaun. They were repelled. They attempted hostilities again on the succeeding day, but were again defeated. On these failures, the auxiliary bodies left Cassivellaun; and Cæsar, being informed of their desertion, ventured to advance to the Thames, and to the borders of the state of the British prince. The ford had been fortified by sharp stakes, underthe water, and on the banks. The Romans passed it up to their necks in water, in the presence of the natives collected in arms on the other side, who, dismayed at the courage of the enemy, hastily retired.

one.

Cassivellaun, keeping only four thousand war

3 Cæsar. lib. iv. c. 18-33. On this expedition Dio's observation seems a fair "He obtained from it nothing, either for himself or for his country, but the glory of having fought in it: and as he stated this very strongly, the people of Rome wondered, and extolled him." Lib. xxxix. p. 128.

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VI.