the Second, the celebrated Druid Age; the Third, the Metonic, or rather Indian, Cycle.

-In this Light, and with this Clue, the Author proceeds to confider the most remarkable Druid Monuments of Britain.--The Carns, the Cromlech, the Logan, the Tolmeh of the Druids, fucceffively defcribed, and my→ thologically explained.-Stonehenge, a folar Temple; the great Circle the Difc of the Sun; the Number of Stones compofing it, including Thirty Impoft and Thirty Uprights, Sixty, the fexagenary Cycle; a Cycle first formed in India, but early adopted in China.-The Adytum, or Cove, of Stonehenge, an Oval, representing the mundane Egg, or Universe; its inner Circle of Stones, Nineteen in number.The grander ferpentine Temple of Abury confdered.-Serpents ever, in the Eaft, Emblems of aftronomical Cycles. Their mythological Hiftory. The great Circle of Columns at Abury, confifting of One Hundred Stones, represents the Sun's Progrefs through a Period of One Hundred Years, or a complete Century.-The leffer Circle of Thirty, the Druid Age.—The

leaft

leaft of Twelve, the Period of Jupiter's Revolution, which, multiplied by Five, forms in India the great fexagenary Cycle.

HA

AVING in the preceding fections, from the first authority, fhewn that the Northern Afia was principally poffeffed by two great nations, the one polifhed and literate, and the other barbarous and unlettered; having alfo fhewn the original defcent and the accidental mixture of those two nations, and traced the progrefs, towards Europe of the great body of the Scythian, or Celtic, colonies, infected with all the fuperftitions of the Indian Buddha, or Woden of the North, that renowned, but obfcure, character, who flourished at the commencement of the prefent age, or period, and who married Ila, whofe father, according to Sanfcreet annals, was preferved in a miraculous ark from an univerfal deluge; we come, in the prefent fection, to the confideration of the particular fuperftitions known to have flourished, during the earliest periods, in thefe iflands; fuperftitions too congenial with thofe anciently celebrated in Afia, to allow any doubt of their having been imported by the earliest Afiatic fettlers.

The first that demands our attention is their attachment to

THE WORSHIP OF RUDE STONES IN CONSE-
CRATED GROVES; AND THEIR SANGUJ-
NARY SACRIFICES OF MEN AND BEASTS.

UPON the commencement of the Theological Differtation, in the first volume of the Indian Antiquities, I had occafion to remark, from Keysler, that the ancient Indo-Scythians performed their fanguinary facrifices "under groves of oak of aftonishing extent and of the profoundest gloom,"* and I curforily traced the veftige of those barbarous rites in Gaul and Britain. I also inftanced, from Herodotus, their peculiar mode of facrificing to the rufty cimeter, the fymbol of Mars, the god Hefus of the Druids, the victims taken in war; and I adduced more than one instance of fimilitude which the national manners of Scythia bore to those of the war-tribe of India. Without crediting all the extravagant affertions of Bailly and De Guignes, concerning the unfathomable antiquity of the primitive

* Vol. ii. p. 36.

proto

prototypal race of Afia, who were doubtlefs Cuthite colonies, at that remote imaginary period, when the line of the equator passed through the middle of the vast deferts of Tartary, and made the frozen foil of Siberia fruitful, we may fafely allow the martial progeny of Scythia, by intermixture and commerce, to have influenced, in a great degree, the habits and cuftoms of their Indian neighbours, and to have been reciprocally affected by thofe of the people with whom they thus accidentally communicated. I fhall not attempt to ascertain in which region the very peculiar veneration which either nation entertained for facred forefts of immense extent originated; it is fufficient for my purpose that this very striking point of affinity anciently exifted between the Tartarian and Brahmin magi. The relentless Diana of the Tauric grove was probably no other than the ftern Nareda, or Cali, of the Indians. Their characters are confentaneous, and their rites accord in dreadful unifon. With the Scythians, à tall and ftately tree, with wide-spreading arms, was the majestic emblem of God; and though Herodotus afferts that they had temples and images, his affertion is not confirmed by any other hiftorian

RIBLquity. In fact, their temples con

DE LA VILLE DE, LYON

H 2

fifted

fifted only of vaft heaps of coloffal ftones, rudely, if at all, carved; and in the most unwieldy ftone, as well as in the most lofty tree, they, like the Indians, contemplated the image of that Deity, of whom their perverted imaginations conceived the majesty and attributes to be best represented by gigantic

fculptures and maffy symbols."

66

While we are treating on this fubject of the oaken groves of the Druids, and the abominable facrifices with which they were contaminated, it is impoffible to avoid remarking how widely this very cuftom of venerating Bætyla, or confecrated stones, and of worshipping under oaks, was diffused in the remoteft periods over the whole Oriental world, and in what profound veneration this very tree was holden by the ancestors of the human race. It was under the confecrated oak that God and his holy meffengers condefcended to hold converfe, and to enter into folemn covenants with the patriarchs. "Abraham," we read, "paffed through the land to the place of SICHEM, and (ad alloun Moreh) to the OAK-GROVE OF MOREH, where the Lord appeared unto him, and faid, Unto thy feed will I give this land: and Abraham builded there an altar unto the Lord." Gen. xii. 6. In another part of Holy