THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR,

EVANGELICAL MISCELLANY.

FEBRUARY, 1852.

A DAY WITH THE DRUIDS.

(With an Engraving of their Necropolis.)

We have two kinds of History-written and unwritten. The last is very contradictory, very uncertain, and often altogether untrue. On many points its information is so meagre that half which it narrates is sheer invention, and the other half turns upon a mere point of criticism or inference. Of early English history, even, though it belongs to so comparatively recent a period, we know almost nothing. The pretty stories of Alfred and the cakes, of Vortigern and Rowena, of Sir Walter Tyrrel and Rufus, are all of very doubtful credit, and the entire history of the aboriginal Britons, is nothing better than a myth.

But when we come to unwritten history, and look at the antiquities that abound in our island, we learn something definite and satisfactory respecting the different nations that have occupied it in succession. A druidical circle, a cromlech, or a tumulus, tells us more about the early Britons than all our primitive chroniclers. A camp, or an earthwork, or a fortress, brings before us more vividly the circumstances connected with the Roman rule here, than the whole narratives of Cæsar or Tacitus. Of the first people, indeed, we know very little, except from the study of those architectural remains which our antiquaries have

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associated with them. If we want to spend a day with the Druids, we may do it better by visiting Stonehenge or Anglesey, the south-west parts of England, or the Channel Islands, than by poring over the pages of any modern writer on the subject. We shall thus see something of what they were, of what they did, of the hopes and fears which moved them, and of the dark and cruel days in which they lived.

It was this feeling which prompted us, some months since, to pay a visit to Stonehenge, and its surrounding Necropolis, a view of which prefaces this little narrative of our proceedings.

During the autumn of last year, we were on a visit in Dorsetshire, and determined to take Stonehenge in our route homeward to the Great Metropolis. We left early in the morning; a wild, watery, sky lowering above, and the roofs of an old "dim, dusky, sea-port town," gleaming beneath us. We rattled on, amidst wastes of heath and woodland for some miles, when the glorious scenery of the New Forest burst upon us, radiant with the thousand tints of Autumn, and broken by park-like commons and moors varying, like discords the beauty of the landscape without damaging it. Pheasants, by scores, were feeding in the open fields by the wood-sides, conjuring up visions of game law anomalies, deer slaying, and the Black Act.

It was high water when we reached Southampton-the narrow ditch, lost in black mud, which waters that town being now swollen to a sea-like river. Trees were fluttering in the sunshine, and a brisk but mild air gave new life to every thing. Two steamers were entering the harbor, and one leaving the pier-light and shadow streaked the surface of the water, with here and there a line of molten gold gleaming intensely in the offing. Even the great guns upon the platform seemed charmed into good humour, and children loitered beneath, or played around them, as if "wars, and rumours of wars" were things unknown in this happy land,

The train for Salisbury was about to leave, and we took our places just in time to see the platform, with its long array of smiling faces bidding joyous farewell, whirl away from us as we moved on to our destination.

We had heard of Salisbury Plain, but should never have

guessed that the huge rounded downs on our left, dotted with sheep looking as small as turnips from the vastness of the details by which they were surrounded—had any claim to such a title. The grey-green of the hill sides was here and there darkened by knots of furze and yew, while the fading foliage of the other trees was exquisitely varied and beautiful-the rich Indian yellow of the ash, the blended tints and graceful contour of the wych elm, and the paler yellow of the young birches, all combined to form a matchless mosaic, relieved at intervals by the quiet grey of an avenue of firs.

It was early afternoon when we reached Salisbury. The majestic spire of the cathedral piercing the clear sky, soared away into the sunshine, to a height that it made one dizzy and breathless to think of. Fine ancestral trees clustered round it -grey walls, and low arches, and old buildings, shut it out from the roaring world; and but for the dry colloquial cry of the jackdaws, which were floating about its tower, and endeavouring against a brisk head-wind to "make" its pinnacles, we might have fancied it altogether sequestrated and cut off from the noise, and activities, and anxieties of poor humanity.

Our thoughts were on Stonehenge and Druidism; on the old barbarian Fenni of the Wiltshire downs. We were intent only on reading the very earliest chapters in British history, so that even the glories of medieval art had no charms for us. Nor were we to be won from our purpose by the greater glory that hovered round the neighbouring church of Bemerton, once the living of the quaint but deep-thinking George Herbert, who, under "the opening eyelids" of a purer faith, sang sweetly of the magic name of Jesus. It would have been refreshing in the very precincts of his own parish to have contemplated the "Country Parson" in all those offices and relations which he so exquisitely appreciated, or to have read the hymns of his "Temple" in the very shadow of those walls which his sanctified genius has invested with such deep interest. But we had other work in hand. Stonehenge lay before us, and we made the best of our way through the town and across the beautiful meadows to Stratford, the large mound of Old Sarum-the Wiltshire Nimroud-looming on our right. It still answers the description of William of Malmsbury, who says it was more

like a castle than a city; by which former name, in fact, it is always known. The children of the place look at it in innocent wonderment, climbing up the festooned banks that hide it from the road-tell you an old town stood there, and that the place is now called Perry's barn-piece. Pleasant ploughed lands, and grassy plats, and twinkling rows of trees-sleek mounds of sober green, and patches of darker underwood, make up the quiet picture.

The splendour of a bright autumnal sun is enhanced by the answering tints of the foliage. Here and there a picturesque cottage stands in shadow, muffled up in creepers of all tints, like shaded wools or fancy-colored chenille, and not a footfall scares the stilness of the dappled road. A tinkle and the faint tremulous bleating of a stray sheep, perhaps, arrests the current of your thoughts-you look down a grassy hollow, and the startled flock lift their black heads, and seem as they ruminate, to be making wry mouths at you for your intrusion. We cross the river, and have now a long range of dark chalk wolds on the left-the "plain," along which we should have passed had we followed the high road instead of affecting the sweet valley of the Avon. Their shadows "are stretched out in great length," but the tree-tops on our right hand are glowing in crimson and gold. Now an opening between the hills lets through a flush of glory just where the fading leaves are brightest, and the landscape burns with radiance. The elms in the hedge-rows are almost unchanged, and form a sober background to the picture. The rooks are floating far over head, and the bright blue sky is powdered and streaked with fleecy clouds. Beneath, the centaury and the blue bell and the constant daisy look up to us in love. Of human kind we see no traces, but our path is starred with hope by Him who pours water on the desert where no man is. God-the living, the loving, walks with us through the radiant solitude of these downs.

And this is "Salisbury Plain !"—the wild untrodden moor, so cold, and pitiless, and barren to the mere man of travel, and "heretofore of bad repute for frequent robberies ?" Yes; but we are only on its confines, skirting its bleak, undulating hills, fringed and feathered with luxuriant vegetation, and vivified