thy God.” Hence also the commendation of those 
princes, as Hezekiah, Josiah, and others, “ who broke 
down the altars of Baalam, and cut down the (/roves.” 
Thus if we cast our eye “ through the deeps of time,” 
travelling from the East to the West, we shall find all 
nations,—the Israelites, the Persians, the Egyptians, the 
Grecians, the Romans. — each had their sacred srroves, 
over which certain deities presided, whence oracles 
spake, and where priests and priestesses officiated, till 
at last we arrive in Britain, and find the Druid per¬ 
forming his horrid rites under our native oak. 
Could we give credence to the poet, we should recall 
the harsh epithet we have bestowed on the superstitious 
observances of Druidism. He, more lenient, says, — 
« There, where the spreading consecrated boughs 
Fed the sage mistletoe, the holy druids 
Lay wrapt in moral musings.” 
Truth, however, who is often called in to correct the 
dreams of fiction, speaks another language, and gives 
a widely different character of their religion; for though 
it is true they held some few primary truths in greater 
purity and distinctness than could be found in the 
mythology even of Greece or Rome, yet these were 
blended with a mass of error, and were made to sanction 
the most bloody and abominable superstitions. 
