63 -- 



only to the initiated, who were obliged to take the 

 oath of secrecy, in which the youths swore that they 

 would not reveal any mysteries they should learn. 

 When under tuition they were not to converse with 

 any but their teachers, until they had finished their 

 education and were dismissed. Those teachers re- 

 sorted to caves or recesses of forests to give their 

 instructions. 



Their other doctrines were called public ones, 

 such as were taught to the people in general ; they 

 were delivered in verse, and abounded in figures and 

 metaphors. The druids stood on little eminences 

 whenever they delivered those discourses to the sur- 

 rounding multitudes, many of which eminences 

 remain to this day. With this fabulous divinity 

 they intermixed moral precepts for regulating the 

 manners of their audiences.* 



They worshipped the Sun : to this illustrious ob- 

 ject of idolatrous worship the famous circles of stone, 

 several of which still remain, seem to have been 

 chiefly dedicated, where the druids kept the sacred 

 fire, the symbol of this divinity, from whence as they 

 were situated on eminences they had a full view of 

 the heavenly bodies. The moon also obtained at 

 an early period a large share of the veneration of 

 mankind. The Gauls and Britons seem to have 

 paid the same kind of worship to the Moon as the 

 Sun, and it has been observed that the circular tem- 

 ples dedicated to these luminaries were of the same 

 construction, and were commonly contiguous. See 



* Rowland's Mona Antigua. JLucan, lib, 1, yer, 460, 



