Most of its
ceremonies were kept secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to
be enchanters, and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them,
about his neck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a
golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies included
the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some suspected criminals,
and, on particular occasions, even the burning alive, in immense wicker
cages, of a number of men and animals together. The Druid Priests had
some kind of veneration for the Oak, and for the mistletoe--the same
plant that we hang up in houses at Christmas Time now--when its white
berries grew upon the Oak. They met together in dark woods, which they
called Sacred Groves; and there they instructed, in their mysterious
arts, young men who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with
them as long as twenty years.
These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to the sky, fragments
of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, in
Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these. Three curious stones,
called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill, near Maidstone, in Kent, form
another. We know, from examination of the great blocks of which such
buildings are made, that they could not have been raised without the aid
of some ingenious machines, which are common now, but which the ancient
Britons certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I
should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed with them
twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept the people
out of sight while they made these buildings, and then pretended that
they built them by magic. Perhaps they had a hand in the fortresses too;
at all events, as they were very powerful, and very much believed in, and
as they made and executed the laws, and paid no taxes, I don't wonder
that they liked their trade. And, as they persuaded the people the more
Druids there were, the better off the people would be, I don't wonder
that there were a good many of them. But it is pleasant to think that
there are no Druids, _now_, who go on in that way, and pretend to carry
Enchanters' Wands and Serpents' Eggs--and of course there is nothing of
the kind, anywhere.
Such was the improved condition of the ancient Britons, fifty-five years
before the birth of Our Saviour, when the Romans, under their great
General, Julius Caesar, were masters of all the rest of the known world.
Julius Caesar had then just conquered Gaul; and hearing, in Gaul, a good
deal about the opposite Island with the white cliffs, and about the
bravery of the Britons who inhabited it--some of whom had been fetched
over to help the Gauls in the war against him--he resolved, as he was so
near, to come and conquer Britain next.
So, Julius Caesar came sailing over to this Island of ours, with eighty
vessels and twelve thousand men. And he came from the French coast
between Calais and Boulogne, 'because thence was the shortest passage
into Britain;' just for the same reason as our steam-boats now take the
same track, every day. He expected to conquer Britain easily: but it was
not such easy work as he supposed--for the bold Britons fought most
bravely; and, what with not having his horse-soldiers with him (for they
had been driven back by a storm), and what with having some of his
vessels dashed to pieces by a high tide after they were drawn ashore, he
ran great risk of being totally defeated.
