circle, with barrows innumerable. I do not give the local designations of the many rocks and carns, for they would convey no definite meaning to the reader, and he would find the list as tiresome on paper, as the reality is picturesque and sublime. This Druid priesthood was a remarkable race. They taught to the commom people a debased Polytheism, but while to the vulgar they told of Taranis, the thunderer, and Hesus, the god of war, and Belus, the sun, and Onvana, the ruler of the waves, their own creed, as is supposed to have been the case with the Egyptian initiated, was widely different. The Pantheon of the Priest had but one God, God the Invisible ! "For there the Druid never knelt before His own device, to worship and adore, Nor blindly deemed that human art could throne A God's bright presence in a form of stone. Oh no! he turned his philosophic eye To the broad ocean, and the pathless sky, And from the mountain, and the torrent, caught Druid was the creation of Like the Saga, the faith of the the land from which he sprung. came home to the feelings, in such scenes as these. Its rude sublimity impressed itself upon nature, and a thousand years have passed over, but not eradicated it. The Culdee has not left even the shadow of his worship. The Saxon Gods are forgotten. Thor, and Odin, and Zernebock, do not exist in a memory or a fragment; but, through the length and breadth * The Druids: Cambridge prize poem, by J. S. Brockhurst. of the land, the Druid and his hypothra, his rock temples, that bare their bosoms to heaven, survive, and seem immortal. There is nothing mean, nor little, nor common, in that which defies time. Sit in the Druid's chair, and look, over that great ocean, at the sun. So, perchance, did the Priest, for whose worship those rings of stone, and that channel to carry off the blood of the victim, were made, perhaps, twenty centuries ago. The mind that in spite of error, stamped its impress upon such a space of time as that, was a master mind, a mind of such an order as, in Christendom, forms an apostle or a martyr, and, in a cause of beautiful deceit, a Mahomet or a Numa. We returned slowly over the down, pausing at times to observe carns and tumuli. Through a narrow lane, which passes a farm-house boasting the name of London, we gained an excellent road, that conducts the traveller to Hugh Town. On the right of the highway is a mass of rocks called Carnefriars, which is evidently a corruption of Carn-Friars, or Carn-Prior. We have here, as in the neighbouring appellation of Holy Vale, a proof of the existence of several religious communities. There is scarcely any tradition to preserve the tale of their existence. Perhaps some Friar John, or Friar Roger, performed there exploits worthy of Chaucer's clerks. Perhaps some Anchorite dwelt in the clefts of the rocks, or peradventure the solitude was hallowed by the abode of many such, better than those whom Boccaccio has immortalized, and, when they shuffled off their mortal coil, "The monks of St. Nicholas said 'twas ridiculous Not to suppose every one was a Saint." We retraced our steps to Hugh Town. The Spanish windmill on Buzza hill gazed down curiously upon us, at the end of the long vista, formed by our road. This windmill was erected by the son of a person who had been many years in our Commissariat, in Spain. I remember once in Italy seeing Bolsena, mouldering, it was quaintly said, over Volsinium. The mill, already in appearance old, is going to decay over the dust of the ancient Lords of the soil. It stands upon the funeral barrows of those, our departed ancestors, who at autumn fall bought the hallowed fire from the same Druids, in whose sacred chair I had, perhaps, sate to-day. A little below it, to the right, was the tower of the church, beautiful in its simplicity. The mariner from Spain, whose vessel is wind-bound in the harbour, looks upon the memorial of his country, and remembers the "va con Dios" that cheered him as he left his home. The Protestant sees in the fabric, rising to our eyes from the hillside, a bond of union, and a memento of his common Christendom, a sign of that faith which is for the universe and for eternity; "A shrine more pure than ever Pagan trod, The Christian's temple, to the Christian's God." CHAPTER VII. SAINT MARY'S. No. 3. O-DAY I finished my survey of St. Mary's Isle, which, indeed deserves to be visited, not in the spirit of those who " peep and botanize,” but with all the feeling of high art, and with a keen appreciation of its lights and shadows. I started from Hugh Town in the afternoon, and followed the path to the left, winding round Permellin, or Porthmellin, bay. On the hill above us are seen some ruins, called Harry's walls. They are all that remain of what was intended to be a fortress, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, but it was never finished. Such was the excellence of the cement used in its construction, that it defies man's efforts to remove it; and there it stands, Mr. Barry, a lesson to you, and to the other architects of this enlightened age. Had I asked an old man, who was working near the spot, the history of those grey stones, if he had not, as most probably he would have done, said something after the fashion of the Spaniard or the Italian, chi sa, or quien sabe, I should have been referred to the omnipresent destroyer, Oliver Cromwell, so I held * Near them is a fine Menhir. my peace. What a singular trait in the idiosyncrasy of this people is their total want of curiosity about the past, their general absence of tradition and of storied memories! Races and generations have ruled here, and have passed away. A rock temple beneath the sky is the tomb of a departed priesthood; yonder curtain and bastion tell a tale of the grim sovereign at whose bidding they arose, and who probably flung down an altar or a monastery to furnish materials for them; the site of Tresco Abbey speaks of its ancient faith; the lonely tower on the hillside beyond is a memorial of the Puritans, and was itself erected from the fragments of a castle of the Plantagenets. At all this you must guess, since you will look in vain for any aid to be found from the natives, or on the spot. The round towers of Ireland are not a greater puzzle to its Celts than are the relics of other days to their kindred here. Antiquity has, perhaps, left a treasure under their feet, but what do they care? The fate of all the argosies ever stranded on their shores is nothing, in their eyes, to a lucky salvage,like that of the West Indiaman, wrecked on the rocks of Samson, this spring. As Körner says, it is,— - Above Permellin bay is a cluster of comfortable houses, and a good road is in process of formation. Indeed, the This is a strong proof of a complete change of race. A tribe or family always preserves it own records, but neglects those of its predecessors. So the ruined cities of South America, in their vastness, are to us a sealed book. Their builders are gone, and those that came after them recked not of them. |