123 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



fatunSy of a branch of mifletoe on the oak. Not 

 that they believed the affairs of the World to be 

 furrendered to Chance. They recognized every 

 where Gods pofTeffed of intelligence ; but not 

 daring to believe them good, while cruel priefts 

 were their only inftruflors in religion, thefe unfor- 

 tunate people imagined, that the Gods took plea- 

 fure only in tears, and immolated to them human 

 vidims, on the very fpot, perhaps, on which now 

 ftands a receptacle for the wretched *. 



Let 



* Some Writers, of our own, have comp>ofed the elogium of 

 the Dniids. I fliall oppofe to them, among other authorities, 

 that of the Romans, who, it is well known, were abundantly to- 

 lerant in matters of religion. Cefar, in his Commentaries, in- 

 forms us, that the Druids, in honour of their Gods, burnt men 

 in bafkets of ofier ; and that when criminals were wanting for 

 this horrible purpofe, they facrificed even the innocent. Sueto- 

 nius, in his life of Claudius, gives this account of the matter : 

 " The religion of the Druids, too cruel, it muft be confefled, 

 " and which, from the time of Auguftus had been fimply for- 

 *' bidden, was by him entirely abolifhed." Herodotus had, long 

 before, loaded them with the fame reproach. 



All that can be oppofed to the teltimony of three Roman Em- 

 perors, and to that of the Father of Hiftory, is the filly evidence 

 of the romance of Aftraea. Have we not faults enough juflly 

 chargeable on ourfelves, without undertaking the difficult talk of 

 juftifying thofe of our anceftors r They were not, indeed, it muft 

 be allowed, more culpable than other Nations, who all prefented 

 human facrifices to the Divinity. Plutarch reproaches the 

 Romans themfelves, with having immolated, in the earlier times 

 of the Republic, two Gauls and two Greeks, whom they buried 

 alive. Is 



