By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



129 



thence, as always situated on high ground, they had a full view of 

 their rising and setting Deity, and of the other heavenly bodies, 

 the Moon and tha Stars, which they associated with him in his 

 worship. Here they sang hymns of praise to their deified lumi- 

 nary : here they put up prayers for his favour and protection : 

 here too they practised their rites of divination, so all important 

 among heathen nations : and carefully guarded the customs and 

 ceremonies of their religion, from which nothing would induce 

 them to deviate : 1 and here they offered sacrifices, though I cannot 

 allow that there is any authority for the assertion so little sub- 

 stantiated, though so often repeated, that some of their victims 

 were human. For we must remember that the Druids were at the 

 zenith of their power and glory, 2 when the Romans first invaded 

 Britain : and as they rallied the people, and resisted the authority 

 of the invaders, and were the greatest hindrance to their success; 

 the latter blackened their character by false accusations of cruelty, 

 to give some colour of excuse for the persecutions they began 

 against them. 3 And this was no new device of the Romans, for 

 that people was accustomed to bring unfounded charges of cruelty 

 against the enemies they intended to destroy, in order to give a 

 better excuse for their own violence against them. As an instance, 

 we may remember the charges of perfidy and cruelty they brought 



1 The Gauls, Britons, and other nations called barbarian, were much, more 

 tenacious of their own customs and opinions, than the Greeks and Romans, who 

 had a propensity to adopt the gods and religious ceremonies of other nations. 

 [Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. i,, 2. Herod: iii., 31, 38.] Compare 

 the Athenian practice [Acts xvii., 18 — 23], with the law of the barbarian Medes 

 and Persians, which altereth not [Daniel vi., 8, 12, 15]. The Egyptians again 

 never adopted foreign customs [Herod: lib: ii., c. 91. Rawlinson ii., 206. 

 Pritchard's Physical History of Mankind, vol. i., p. 326, quoting Denon] : and 

 that the Scythians entertained an extreme aversion to them, is evidenced by the 

 fates of Anacharsis and Scylas [Herod: lib: iv., cap. 76 — 80.] So again, the 

 Athenians made it a reproach to the Lacedremonians, that they evinced so 

 unsocial a spirit, as to avoid every thing foreign [Thucydides booki., chap. 77, 

 131], just as the Chinese and Japanese do at the present day. 



2 Professor Pearson's Early and Middle ages of England, p. 14. 



3 Compare Herodotus' most sound refutation of the unfounded assertion of the 

 Greeks, that human sacrifices were offered by the Egyptians. [Lib : ii., cap. 45. 

 Eawlinson's note, vol. ii., p. 84 and 190.] See also, Thucyd: i., 22. 



VOL. IX. — NO. XXVI. L 



