most comprehensive character. Not only did it combine an initiation into their religious doctrines, their sacred rites and ceremonies, but also a study of the laws which they had to administer and a considerable share of the conduct of public affairs. Beyond these they had an extraordinary knowledge of the exact sciences, Arithmetic and Astronomy, with the useful study of medicine and the refinements of Poetry. They taught also an exalted system of morals, and the Immortality of the Soul, Pythagoras and Socrates could teach no more, and perhaps not even so much. Lucan has described those acquirements with all the fire and graces of poetry to the same effect that other writers have done in prose, and his account has been almost paraphrased in our own language, by the late Dr. Richards in his spirited Oxford Prize Poem entitled 'The aboriginal Britons.'
Hail Heaven born Seers whose magic fingers strung The Cambrian lyre, who Locrine triumphs sung. *** Ye sung the courses of the wandering moon; The sun-beam darken'd in the blaze of noon; The stars unerring in their glittering spheres; The sure procession of the circling years; And the dread powers, that rule the world on high, And hold celestial synods in the sky. *** The warrior souls ye sung would deathless bloom, When the cold limbs lay mouldering in the tomb; From the pale stiff'ning corses wing their flight, And rise in kindred mould to life and light. *** When, amid blazing orbs, the warrior soul, Borne through the milky way and starry pole, Would painless tenant through eternal years Mansions of purest bliss in brighter spheres.
Such were the lessons taught the ancient Britons by their priests the Druids, and hence we cannot be surprised at their contempt of death as we have it described and accounted for. Tacitus and other writers declare them to have been braver than the Gauls, of taller stature and more athletic. Solinus tells us that when a male child was born the mother was accustomed to place his first food on the point of her husband's sword, and placing it in the infant's mouth pray to the gods that he might die in war in the midst of hostile swords and javelins.
