to him upon the fhore, thronged with warriors and prepared with warlike inftruments, the women running up and down, and bearing torches before them, after the manner of the furies, in the dress worn at their funeral folemnities, and with dishevelled hair; the Druids every where pouring forth the most dreadful imprecations, with hands uplifted to heaven, terrified the foldiers with the novelty of fuch a spectacle, who, as if fixed to the spot where they stood, yielded their bodies immoveable to the wounds of their enemy. At length, at the exhortations of the general, and alfo encouraging each other, that they should not be intimidated at that female and frantic multitude, they advance their ftandards, overthrow all who oppose them, and plunge the Britons into their own fires."

By

By the bye this last was an act of the most unjust and unneceffary cruelty in the Romans, who feem only to have been instigated to it by the demons of revenge ; for when we confider that the deluded multitude who oppofed their invafion, were in reality fighting in defence of every thing that was valuable in their domestic, and of every thing that was dear and venerable in their public life; that they beheld the temples of their gods impiously polluted, and their facred groves violated and profaned; can we feel furprifed, or rather was it nor natural that they should refift the fury of an enemy, preparing to trample upon their rights, their liberties, and their religion? And if in general, we regard the conduct of the Romans with refpect to the conquered nations, we shall find that the most cruel and rapacious spirit characterised all their military

.

military transactions. They led the unhappy victims of their perfecution in barbarous triumph to the capital, and felt a more than brutal pleasure in liftening to the groans of the untaught and defencelefs children of nature, the naked inhabitants of the wilds and forests of the most uncivilized and unpromifing regions. Their inhumanity and cruelty is only to be equalled, in more modern times, by the conqueft of Peru and Mexico, and the taking of the island of St. Domingo by the Spaniards, which has fixed an indeli ble blot of infamy upon that nation; and by that difgraceful and abominable traffic that fubfifts to this day in the Weft, of bartering our fellow creatures at a public auction, and fubjecting them to the disgraceful dominion of the most unfeeling of tyrants.

Very few traces of the temples and habitations of the Druids are now to be found; fome old ftones, fhapeless and without order, here and there, indicate that there might have stood on these spots the rude and fimple piles, where the primæval inhabitants of this island folemnifed their religious ceremonies; and this is all that now remains of that once celebrated order of priesthood, which overspread the northern regions of Europe. Strange fatality! that a system of religion fo founded on prejudice, and rivetted in fuperftition and ignorance, and fo intimately blended with the political governments of thofe times, that it appeared capable of triumphing over that invisible mutation to which all human establishments are liable, and of opposing Christianity itself, should now be fo loft, fo forgotten, that little more than a few shape

lefs

less stones, and the uncertain teftimony of oral tradition, remain to fatisfy us of the influence that extraordinary religion once poffeffed over the human mind:

"Illi rebus divinis interfunt, facrificia publica ac privata procurant, religiones. interpretantur

fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatifque conftituunt, fi quod eft admiffum facinus, fi cædes facta, fi de hereditate, fi de finibus controverfia eft iidem decernunt, præmia pænafque conftituunt *."

They prefide over all facred ceremonies; they adminifter both public and private facrifices; they are the interpreters of all religious affairs

They for the most

* Cæfar in Gall, Lib. 6.

part