superior civilisation and refined manners of their conquerors.

"The Britons", says Tacitus, "are a people who pay their taxes and obey the laws with pleasure, provided that no arbitrary and illegal demands be made upon them; but these they cannot bear without the greatest impatience, for they are only reduced to the state of subjects, not of slaves." The Colonia Devana was called by the Britons "Caer Lleon Gawr", and Caer Lleon ar Ddyfrdwy, to distinguish it from Caer Lleon ar Wysg in Monmouthshire, in the ancient kingdom of the Essyllwyr, or Silures, and it is now called Chester by the English.

The xx Legion was recalled from Britain previous to A.D. 445, as it is not mentioned in the Notitia, a work that was composed about that year; but it is supposed to have been withdrawn from Chester before the retreat of the Romans from this island, as its name has been found at Bath amongst the latest inscriptions there. After the final abdication of Britain by the Roman legions, A.D. 448, Chester and Powys-land fell under the government of the Britons.

No sooner, however, had the Romans withdrawn their armies, than the Picts and Scots, who had hitherto been kept in check, renewed their incursions on a larger scale, and the Britons, we are informed by Gildas, were reduced to the greatest state of wretchedness and misery. In a letter written to Etius, the Roman commander in Gaul, in 446, the Britons are described as sheep, and the Picts and Scots as wolves. The miserable Britons complain to Etius that "The barbarians drive us back to the sea; the sea drives us back again to perish at the hands of the barbarians"; and also plead "that if succour should not be sent them, the name of Rome would be dishonoured." However, in the following year, Gildas informs us that the Britons left their houses and lands, and taking shelter in mountains, caves, and forests, succeeded in driving back their enemies, the Picts and Scots.

In 449 the English, under Hengist, landed with his

army in the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, and after having conquered the south-eastern, central, and northern parts of Lloegria, they marched, in 607, through Staffordshire, towards Powys, and then, or according to other accounts, in 613, fought the battle of Chester, in which they defeated the Britons, and destroyed the monastery of Bangor-is-y-Coed. By this victory, the English first acquired territories on the coasts of the Irish Sea, and the kingdoms of Strathclyde and Elmet were severed from Wales. Chester was so thoroughly destroyed that it remained in ruins for nearly three centuries, to be rebuilt by Æthelflæda, "the Lady of the Mercians", in 907, and the plains of Lancashire lay open to the invader.1

Cæsar tells us that the chief priests of the Britons were called Druids, and they believed in the transmigration of souls, believing that souls do not perish, but after death pass into other bodies." In times of danger, they sought to propitiate the Deity by offering him human sacrifices, for which purpose they constructed enormous images of wicker-work, and filled them with living men, who were then destroyed by fire. The cult, therefore, of the ancient Britons appears to have been very similar to that of the Tyrians and Karthaginians, who worshipped Kronos and Baal Moloch.

"The Rabbins assure us", says Calmet, "that the image of Baal Moloch, or the Lord Moloch, was of brass, sitting upon a throne of the same metal, adorned with a royal crown, having the head of a calf, and his arms extended as if to embrace anyone. Others relate that the idol was hollow, and within it were contained seven partitions, one of which was appointed for meal or flour, in the second there were turtles, in the third an ewe, in the fourth a ram, in the fifth a calf, in the sixth an ox, and in the seventh a child. All these were burnt together by heating the statue outside." So Diodorus writes of the cult at Karthada: "There was among them a brazen statue of

1 Cave Hunting, p. 110. This work ought to be well studied by all Welshmen who have any regard for the past history of their native country. 2 See Buddhist Birth Stories, by Rhys Davids. Trübner.

Kronos, holding out his hands towards the ground in such a manner that the child placed on them rolled off and fell into a certain chasm full of flame." (Diod., xx, 14.) And he relates how the Karthaginians sacrificed two hundred of their noblest children and three hundred other persons to the god when hard pressed by Agathocles of Sikelia. The ox-headed Molekh-statue was hollow within and heated from below, and the children to be sacrificed were cast into its arms. (Gesenius, Heb. Lex., 478.)

But besides the images of Baal Moloch, which were used in the worship of the Druids in the time of Cæsar, we find also the remains of circular buildings formed by monoliths and upright stones, Meini Hirion, stone columns and pillars. These stone columns or pillars are frequently to be met with in the east, and their purpose is easily recognized, more especially the wooden emblem, which became the Tree of Life, and the Stauros or Cross of Osiris. The stauros, or cross, had the same signification exactly as the Tree of Life, the Maen Hir, or upright stone, the maypole, obelisk, and pyramid, all being emblems of immortality and the life-giving powers of God in nature. We learn from the Bible, that when many of the Israelites had been killed in the wilderness, Moses, their lawgiver, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, set up a stauros or cross, the Crux Ansata, or cross of Osiris, and on it hung a pendent brazen serpent, and told his followers to worship that emblem and they would be healed and preserved. At the town of Pilhom in Egypt, a brazen serpent was regarded as the symbol of that God whom they worshipped as the Lord and Giver of Life.

The story in the bock of Genesis, of the serpent and the Tree of Life, with regard to Eve, and its results, is so well known that I need not say more on this interesting subject at present, than remark, that at the suggestion of the serpent, Eve eat some of the apples of the tree, and gave unto her husband and he did eat. Cooper, in his Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt, states that the Mystic

Apples of the West, in the Hesperian Gardens of Amenti, are watched by fire-breathing Araui; and the Arau (cobra di capello) moreover, is always represented in the feminine form, and is used as a symbol of fecundity.

More commonly the plain stauros was joined with an oval ring, and worn as an amulet. In this form, or in that of a ring inclosing a cross of four spokes, this emblem is to be found everywhere. In each of these forms the ring is distinctly connected with the goddess who represents the female power in nature. Finally, the male symbol in its physical characteristics suggested the form of the serpent, which thus became the emblem of life and healing, and as such appears by the side of the Hellenic Asclepios, and the brazen crucified serpent venerated by the Jewish people, till it was destroyed by Hezekiah.1

The Egyptian Tau, or Crux Ansata, joined to the ring or circle, was placed in the hands of all the Egyptian gods as an emblem of their divinity.

1

The vital powers of nature were represented by an upright and oval emblem, and the conjunction of the two furnished at once the altar and the ashera or grove. Here, at the winter solstice, the women wept and mourned for Tammuz, the fair Adonis, "yearly wounded", and done to death by the boar of winter. Here also, on the third day, they rejoiced at the resurrection of the Lord of Light. Payne Knight remarks, that "Homer frequently speaks of places of worship consisting of an area and an altar only. The temples dedicated to the creator Bacchus-Dionysos seem to have been anciently of the same kind, whence probably came the title Perikionion, surrounded with columns, attributed to that god in the Orphik Litanies. The god himself also appears as Dionysos Stylos, the Pillar or Upright Stone. Pliny tells us that the earliest monuments, such as upright stones and obelisks, were so many monuments dedicated to the Sun-god. We here perceive what the cult was that

1 Mythology of the Aryan Nations.

2 His. Nat., 6, lxxxvi, cap. viii and ix.

was practised in Stonehenge and in all circular buildings formed by pillars.

From the light thrown upon the stone circles, Meini Hirion, and other memorials of past ages, we may be able to find out what was the faith and worship of our remote ancestors. Many of their customs we still retain. Some of us without knowing their real meaning. We find that very frequently stone circles were erected near the graves of the departed, and in the centre of the stone circle an upright stone, Mein Hir or Monolith. This upright stone, or pillar, represented the Deity as the Author and Giver of Life, who would guard in the next world the departed souls now freed from the prison of their fleshly bodies as he had preserved them whilst they were on earth.

The serpent we know was an emblem of the after life, for after putting off its skin it still lives on, as we shall do when we leave our bodies of flesh. Many of the circular stone temples, as was the case at Stonehenge, had serpentine avenues; and the serpent, as we have seen, was worshipped also as an emblen of the life-giving power of God in nature.

IDOL-WORSHIP.

The Emperor Julian gives the following account, which is the most correct that we possess, of the nature of idol worship in its origin, and in the primitive intention of the inventors of images. (Jul., Imp. Fragm., pp. 537, 539)

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"The statues of the gods, the altars that have been raised to them, the sacred fire which is kept up in their honour, and, generally speaking, all symbols of this description, have been consecrated by our fathers as symbols of the presence of the gods, not in order that we should look upon them as gods, but that we may honour the gods by means of them.

"In fact, being ourselves connected with bodies, we ought to render a bodily worship to the gods. These gods, themselves incorporeal by their nature, have presented to us their first images in the second order of gods, or in those which revolve eternally on the vault of heaven. But not being able to pay corporeal worship in a direct manner to these first