62 JElssay on Caerphillij Caatle. 



No parting souls to grisly Pluto go, 



Nor seek the dreary silent shades below ; 



But forth they fly, immortal in their kind, 



And other bodies in new worlds they find. 



Thus life for ever runs its endless race, 



And like a line, death but divides the space, 



A stop which can but for a moment last, 



A point between the future and the past." 

 None of these traits vvliicli characterise the most refined systems of 

 pagan mythologj', and seem to point to a liigher original, can be recog- 

 nised in the abject superstitions of the M-^endish, or Slavonian nations, to 

 which they have adhered with unexampled pertinacity. Their gods are 

 merely the creatures of a rude and uncultivated fancy, the capricious 

 phantoms of a coarse and sensual imagination. We discern no trace of 

 any moral end for which their existence may have been feigned, or of any 

 moral government wiiich they were supposed to have exercised. Their 

 attributes are wholly physical ; their existence has reference only to phy- 

 sical wants, and to physical objects. We know not whether a future state 

 was recognised by the Wends ; and if it was, we have no ground for sup- 

 posing that it was a state of retribution, or that this people had any belief 

 in rewards and punishments administered by the gods, either in this or a 

 future state. They performed sacrifices ; but whether these sacrifices were 

 piacular, and connected with a notion, imjjlying perhaps too much of 

 refinement and reflection for minds so uncultivated, of guilt contracted and 

 guilt to be expiated or atoned for, we are without any satisfactory in- 

 formation. 



a^sssaj) on Caerplnllij Cattle* 



No. I.— HISTORY. 



It is remarkable that the Castle of Caerphilly, the ruins of which exceed 

 in grandeur and extent those of any other castellated structuie in Great 

 Britain, Windsor scarcely excepted, should have remained hitherto alto- 

 gether neglected, or very superficially noticed, by the historians and tourists 

 of Wales, as well as by the more elaborate writers upon the military 

 architecture of our foi-efathers. 



AVith respect to the earlier authorities, Caradoc of Llancarvon, Giraldus 

 Cambrensis, and the like, who flourished before the erection of the present 

 edifice, which was probably preceded by one of very inferior dimensions, 

 this silence is readily to be accounted for j but it is certainly singular that 

 it should have been preserved by Lloyd and his commentator Powel, and 

 transmitted almost unbroken by the indefatigable, though credulous author 

 of the " Munimenta."* 



* King alludes to, and probably intended to have added a description of it. — He 

 has given views and sections of Castell Coch, a neighbouring fortress. 



