rYPES OL' ANCIENT BllITISII EABTHWORKS. 63 



(Dil fjje Ctjpefi nf inrient Srifolj 

 (ßnrtjjnrnrka. 



BY TUE REV. P. WAKKE. 



IT can hardly be but that researches into the habits and 

 investigations of the rernains of a people whose exist- 

 ence as a nation terminated at the time from which the 

 written history of these islands takes its origin, rnust 

 always be inore or less unsatisfactory, and their results at 

 best little niore than ingenious guesses at the truth ; and 

 the events which we know to have taken place in this 

 country render this Observation peculiarly applicable to all 

 attempts to explain the vestiges which -even now remain 

 on our uncultivated hüls and downs of that race which 

 occupied this country before the period of the Roman in- 

 vasion. All that we really know of them amounts to this : 

 that a race of warlike savages, not altogether destitute of 

 intellectual cultivation, a branch of the great Celtic family, 

 had from a very early time possessed the island ; that they 

 had a religion retaining some vestiges of priraeval civiliza- 

 tion and knowledge ; a priesthood whose attainments in 

 astronomy and mcchanics, from whatever source derived, 



VOL. VIII., IN.')*, PAKT II. I 



