480 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2''d S. V. 128., June 12. '58. 



own admission, for the Roman legions. The Bri- 

 tish chariot system combines, he states, the solidity 

 of infantry with the rapidity of cavalry. The 

 Scriptures speak of the 900 chariots of Jabin, 

 king of Canaan, as an extraordinary number, but 

 Caesar alleges that the mere reserve retained by 

 the British Pendragon or Dictator Caswallon, after 

 dismissing the rest of his forces, amounted to 4000 

 ,of these formidable engines — against which the 

 Roman cavalry were helpless for either defence 

 or offence. 



3. Caesar and his army, the conquerors of the 

 Continent of Europe, of Asia, of Africa, of Rome 

 itself, must be acknowledged the most formidable, 

 as they were the first, of the invaders of Britain. 

 William the Norman and his feudal levies were 

 comparatively barbarians in both science and dis- 

 cipline. Yet William in one battle made such a 

 complete conquest of the land, that the effects of it 

 remain to this day : whilst Caesar was met with in 

 six pitched fiehls, had his own camp twice as- 

 saulted, failed in two campaigns to advance beyond 

 St. Alban's, left not a Roman soldier behind, and 

 lost for a time, as the result of his discomfiture, 

 all his Gallic acquisitions. For another century 

 the Roman empire, though wielding a force of 

 600,000 men (legionaries and auxiliaries), did not 

 venture a second attempt on Britain. It is ob- 

 vious, I think, that Britain B.C. 55 was a more 

 fprmidable power, and occupied a higher position 

 in military science and social civilisation, than 

 the Britain of a.d. 1066. 



4. No one who has examined the British and 

 Roman systems of castrametation and field works 

 as exemplified in the camps which, in the west 

 especially, may be seen yet confronting each other 

 with hostile grandeur, will I think hesitate in as- 

 signing with Sir Christopher Wren the palm of 

 science to the British. It the power of continuous 

 labour is the true test of civilisation, then the 

 Briton was not inferior to the Roman. " It would 

 occupy," calculates Hutton (p. 136.), "5000 men 

 a whole year to construct the encampment of 

 Hen Dinas (old Oswestry)." Yet Hen Dinas is 

 far from being the largest of our ancient British 

 " Caerau." And it must be remembered we see 

 them now, not in the pride of their first estate — 

 with fosses, portals, chariot-ways, ramparts, and 

 towers — but as ruins, — the relics of nigh two 

 thousand years of the ravages of time. 



5. Turning to non- military earth-works, every 

 known artificial mound dwarfs into very humble 

 dimensions by the side of Silbury Hill and Caer 

 Sallwg (Old Sarum). No "Mons Sacer" for 

 holding the assizes of a tribe "sub Dio," in ac- 

 cordance with the Druidic system, by which all 

 judicial, all civil proceedings were transacted in 

 the face of the sun, between sunrise and sunset, 

 assumes the magnificent dimensions of the Silurian 

 Mote (the Hereford beacon) ; and though " mys- 



tic " Herbert insists on crediting the Nep-Druid- 

 ism of Post-Roman Britain with the construction 

 of these enormous piles, we see no reason for dis- 

 senting from the old belief in their Prae-Roman 

 chronology. But even these sink into second- 

 class illustrations of engineering skill and patience 

 compared with the British embankment of the 

 Thames from Richmond to Gravesend, attributed 

 to Belinus, B.C. 680, worthy to be the masterpiece 

 of the Titanic navvies who had tried their hands 

 previously on such masses as the above. In Cam- 

 den's time it was the fashion to father all monu- 

 ments attesting grandeur of conception and exe- 

 cution on the Romans, though a walk around any 

 earthwork admitted to be British might have 

 opened the eyes of any but a determined Anti- 

 Briton to the evidence before him that there 

 was a nation at home equal to their accomplish- 

 ment. Polybius, Justin, Livy, and Florus, concur 

 in naming Brennus and Belgovesus as the founders 

 of most of the great Cisalpine cities. That these 

 were British kings is now pretty generally granted. 

 That they were conquerors, bringing civilisation 

 and not Vandalism in their train, is obvious from 

 the cities and the nature of the empire founded 

 by them. Such civilisation must have accom- 

 panied them out of Britain, nor shall we greatly 

 err if we consider the wondrous embankment of 

 the Po a sister-work to that of the Thames by 

 the same British sovereigns. 



6. The lithic ruins of the old Druidic temples 

 extend over Britain from Cornwall to the He- 

 brides. These vast circles of obelisks were the 

 scenes of the national solemnities, festivities, and 

 games ; the originals of the Olympic and other 

 games of early Hellas, of the Campus Martins 

 of Rome, of the Champ de Mai of Gaul, of the 

 Courts Plenieres of after ages. Amesbury has 

 disappeared : fragments only of Stonehenge re- 

 main. These "Caerau" were lithic planetariums or 

 orreries representing the great temple of the uni- 

 verse, and, as it would tax our utmost mechanical 

 ingenuity to convey and adjust the immense solitary 

 obelisks composing them, so it would, we appre- 

 hend, puzzle Professor Airey or Hind to restore 

 them to their primitive astronomical accuracy. 

 " Multa (says Caesar of the Druids) de sideribus 

 atque eorum motu tradunt." Druidism and Py- 

 thagoreanism were in most respects the same phi- 

 losophy. The Copernican system is, as everybody 

 knows, the Pythagorean or Druidic revived and 

 proved ; the Druidic circles, therefore, must have 

 delineated the true system of the heavens. In- 

 deed the Greek appellation for the Druids was 

 derived from the British term for astronomer 

 (Saronida, from ser, stars ; seron, the starry sys- 

 tem; seronjtU, an astronomer). But all this mate- 

 rial and philosophic science flourished long before 

 the Roman invasion. In Ciesar's time the Druidic 

 colleges in Britain were frequented by the elite 



