markable. The ancient writers seem to have been much impressed with the wonder which such curiosities excite. Pliny tells of a rock near Harpasa that a finger rightly applied would move, and the whole body otherwise applied could not stir; Ptolemy says of the "Gygonean Rock" that it could be stirred by a stroke from a stalk of asphodel, but could not be removed by any force. In Gibson's edition of "Camden's Brittania" there is a description, from a manuscript by Mr. Owen, of a Rocking Stone in Pembrokeshire, which is specially interesting: "This shaking stone may be seen on a sea-cliff within half a mile of St. David's. It is so vast that I presume it may exceed the draught of an hundred oxen, and it is altogether rude and unpolished. The occasion of the name ( y maen sigl, or the 'rocking stone') is for that being mounted on divers other stones about a yard in height is so equally poised that a man may shake it with one finger so that five or six men sitting on it shall perceive themselves moved thereby." This stone was made immovable by some soldiers during the civil wars; they threw it from its support, because, as they professed, it encouraged superstition, just as they destroyed monumental brasses, painted glass, etc., on the same pretext; the Cromwellian soldiers also upset a famous stone called Menamber, in Sithney parish, Cornwall, of which we are told that "a little child could move it, whereas it required immense labor and pains to remove it." At Golcar Hill, near Halifax, in Yorkshire, there is a stone which was a rockingstone until, as it is said, "some working men, curious to discover the principle thereof, hacked a fragment off of one extremitie, and lost its equilibrium;" they sought to restore this, by hacking "the other extremitie, but when they had hacked a little the stone went the other way, and whiles they continued their efforts from end to end, it went up and down indeed to one end and the other, but utterlie refused to recover its balance." Not many years since, there was a similar stone on the Cornwall coast which some "sailors threw from its balance in sport; the people insisted upon its restoration, and tackle was brought from the ship and every effort was made under the supervision of skillful engineers, but the tackle brake and the stone defied the skill of the engineers." I have not attempted to picture any of these rocking stones because all I have seen have lost their characteristic peculiarity. No distinctive use has

been attempted to be assigned to these rocking stones, beyond the general statement that they "formed a part of the system of divination prac ticed by the Druid priests."

I presume a slight digression just here will be pardoned by my readers, that I may notice briefly a stone which originally stood, according to George Buchanan, the Scottish historian and poet, in Argyleshire, Scotland, was transferred in the ninth century to Scone, and there enclosed in a wooden chair, by King Kenneth. The old monkish legend

COSTUME OF GAULISH DRUIDS.

claimed that it was the identical stone which had formed Jacob's pillow. The popular Scottish legend, however, is far more credible, viz., that it was the ancient inauguration-stone of the kings of Ireland. Sir Walter Scott says: "This fatal stone was said to have been brought from Ireland by Fergus the son of Eric, who led the Dalriads to the shores of Argyleshire. Its virtues are preserved in the celebrated leonine verse. . . which may be rendered thus:

“Unless the Fates are faithless found,
And Prophet's voice be vain,
Where'er this monument be found
The Scottish race shall reign.'"

Edward I. removed this stone from Scone to Westminster, and here it remains, "the ancientest respected monument in the world; for, although some others may be more ancient as to duration, yet thus superstitiously regarded are they not." This is the famous "Stone of Destiny," upon which rests the seat of the Coronation chair of England; the chair is shown in the engraving on page 224, and the stone is seen beneath the seat. That Edward I. removed the stone from Scone to Westminster, and that it has ever since and continues to sustain the seat of the Coronation Chair of the sovereigns of the British Empire, are facts that admit of no question. In support of the first of these facts, I may as well mention that the record of the expenses of its removal is carefully. preserved. That it was ever Jacob's pillow is as certainly not true, while the Scottish tradition so gracefully related by Sir Walter Scott, partially quoted above, is not improbable.

This stone is not a memorial of the antiquity of Engla-land in the same sense as the Druid remains. I have attempted to bring before my readers, and yet it is not entirely out of place or unworthy. of note among those memorials, as its antiquity is beyond question so great that its origin or whence it first came can never be positively known.

I cannot but wish there were some better, more reliable and more intelligible tokens preserved of the domestic manners and customs of the old Druidic inhabitants of Engla-land. But I have found little or I might say nothing that is clear and authentic enough to approximate the stone and earth records of their religion and of their warlike skill and prowess. But such as I have found, I must give my readers the benefit of.

The first question as to the manners and customs of a people, I take it, naturally concerns their dress. And here the best I can offer are sketches from some Roman statues showing the costume of the Gauls of the time of the Roman invasion, at which time probably the British people were arrayed in pretty much the same style; we cannot determine, however, with any certainty, the time when skin garments were superseded by those of linen or cloth.

Is it not remarkable that a people with so much skill in some things, have left no sketch or picture or engraved or carved representation of themselves? Of the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and other ancient people, we have clear and unmistakable testimouy in paintings and sculptures, often extremely rude but always valuable as data from which to learn something of their every-day

COSTUME OF GAULISH DRUIDS.

life and of their characteristic appearance, dress, etc. But of the early inhabitants of Britain, even to the period of the Roman invasion, there is literally nothing sufficiently pronounced and authentic to serve as a safe basis for the merest conjecture. Their very dress, as we have seen, is only to be surmised from Roman statues of a neighboring people, and even these of a comparatively modern day.

That the Britons were agriculturists in some considerable degree, has been inferred from certain caves and pits found in various parts of Britian, believed to be of sufficient antiquity, viewed in connection with certain passages in Tacitus's account of the manners and customs of the ancient

Germans; he says: "The Germans were accustomed to dig subterraneous caverns, and then to cover them with much loose mould, forming a refuge from wintry storms and a receptacle for the fruits of the earth," etc. A notable cavern, agreeing with the German cavern-barns described by Tacitus, exists at Royston, in Hertfordshire, first discovered under the market-place of that town in 1742. Kent has many such, in the heaths and fields and woods about Crayford. So also near Tilbury, in Essex, there are two, which Camden describes as he saw them; he gives rude representations of them, and tells us they were "spacious caverns in a chalky cliff built very artificially of stone to the height of ten fathoms, and somewhat straight at the top." As Tacitus states that the caverns of the Germans were chiefly designed as barns for the safe-keeping of the fruits of the earth, so it is inferred that the same was the purpose of those of Britain, and it is further inferred from the large numbers of these found all over old Britain that the people were largely employed in agriculture.

and on that part which is next the water it is covered with a horse-hide. It is about five feet in length and three in breadth, and is so light that, coming off the water, they take them upon their backs and carry them home." Such were the fishing boats on the Severn in Camden's time, and such or similar were, I doubt not, the fishingboats of the Britons of centuries before. It has

been conjectured, from some

Roman writers, that the Britons had boats adapted to distant navigation; but this is questioned by many of the most reliable English antiquaries. Cæsar, in his "History of the Civil War," says that he had modeled his boats for crossing rivers in Spain after those he saw in Britain; these may have been somewhat like our American Indians' canoes, as remains of what appear to have been boats, seven to eight feet long, hollowed out of trees, have been found in Dumfries, in the marshes of the Medway, and elsewhere in distan: parts of the country. In draining Mar-on Lake (Martine Mere), in Lancashire, eight canoes, each out of a single tree, were discovered deeply buried in the mud and sand, and in a creek of the Arun, near North Stoke, Sussex, a canoe of the same sort was found in 1834Suetonius tells us the pearls of Britain afforded a strong temptation to Cæsar, and contributed to his determination to invade the country. Marbodæus, a still earlier Latin poet, quoted by Camden, says:

But the primitive Britons. were also fishermen. We know that the primitive inhabitants of all sea girt countries have been mostly fishermen, and we cannot doubt that the people who had at their command the treasures of the wide estuaries and deep rivers of Britain found an important proportion of their sustenance in the waters. We find in Gibson's "Camden's Brittania," an admirable description of the fishing-boats on the Severn: "The fishermen in these parts use a small thing called a coracle, in which one man being seated will row himself with incredible swiftness with one hand, while with the other he manages his net, angle or other fishing-tackle. It is of a form almost oval, made of split sally twigs' interwoven,round at the bottom 1 Willow-twigs.

Hence,

"And Brittania's ancient shores great pearls produce." And later Ausonius poetically calls the pearls of Britain, "the white shell berries." pearl fishing at least must have been an impor tant pursuit of the Britons at a very early period. I have still to speak of the dwellings and of the public roads of the ancient Britons, and then, after a general summary, we shall have to enter upon the study of Engla-land in the Roman Period.