these same ancestors held the faith which the Druids of the times of Julius Cæsar professed and taught; and these same rude altars and shrines were the same before which the Druid priests had bowed down and worshipped. It is impossible for any rational person to come to any other conclusion. The order for abolishing them issued a century later by the Frankish king, and the threat against all who should oppose the bishops in their attempts to break them, attest the profound impression which the doctrines and practices of the Druids had left upon the Gallic mind. This is also shown. by the necessity of re-enacting, by imperial authority, the laws for their destruction after the lapse of three centuries more. It is very wonderful that so many of these Druidical monuments should still survive the repeated aggressions of the Petro-clastic party, and be found in central Gaul. But many of these were indestructible by any means which the barbarians, who ruled in central Gaul between the fifth and ninth century of our era, could command. We now know that the Celtic, Slavonic, Teutonic, Latin, and Greek languages are branches of one mother speech, which had its home in central Asia, and that the people who spoke them must have moved westward in their migrations, without having taken into their company any considerable portion of that other ancient civilized race who spoke the Semitic language. Whether the emigrants from the East brought into the various countries of Europe a common language, which was afterwards corrupted into the various forms known to us historically, or whether the various corruptions took place in the East, and were imported into Europe by successive tides of emigrants, who followed each other at certain intervals, is a doubtful question. My own belief is, that all the maritime coasts of Europe were at a very early period partially occupied by settlers from the East, who were conveyed over the sea in ships. If central Europe, even within the historic period, was, for the most part, covered by forests, lakes, and marshes, what must have been its condition some thousand years before profane history commences? The oldest written documents which historic Greece possessed, were the Homeric poems, strangely changed by the Ionian scribes, to suit their improved grammar, and expressed in characters unknown in the age of Homeric poets. Hence the Latin language, as written two hundred years before Christ, is a more archaic form of the language spoken by the ancestors of the Hellenes, than are the Homeric poems in the form which they have reached us. Even this travestied language, patronized as it was by all the temple priests and oracular prophets, did not become the common language, but was lost in the various local dialects of the several provinces. We know, from Polybius, that state documents written 500 B.C. were drawn up in a form of the Latin language which learned Romans, contemporaries of Polybius, could not, without great difficulty, understand. Again, when the same Latin language, in its most polished form, became the speech of imperial Rome in all her departments, it gradually deteriorated, and, though adopted as the authoritative tongue of the Western Church, it could not long preserve its purity, and finally degenerated into the various dialects which derive their origin from it. The same course of reasoning is applicable to the Teutonic language, when the different branches into which it has diverged are compared with the Moso-Gothic translations of the Gospels by Ulphilas, who lived about the end of the fourth century of the Christian era. It is therefore possible that the speech imported into Europe by the first Eastern colonies, into their various settlements, was far more uniform in its character than the various dialects historically known to us. Time and circumstances, internal and external, may have produced, within the confines of Europe, the wide divergence now existing between the European representatives of the great Indo-European language. The first emigrants from the East seem to have acted either under some extraordinary impulse, and to have occupied the various countries which fell to the lot of the different tribes and families almost simultaneonsly, or at least during a space of time which may be termed the age of migration and dispersion. I see no reason to infer that the occupation of Britain by the people who reared the megalithic structures, was much posterior in time to the occupation of Greece by the same kindred race; for the principles of construction and the forms are the same in both the easternmost and westernmost sides of Europe. Now, the great corruptors of our language are, changes of religion, foreign invasion and subjugation, and unrestricted communication with strange races, different in dialect: granting this to be true, which of the people inhabiting Europe were less likely to change their language and institutions than the Celtic race, and especially the inhabitants of Great Britain? It was here that the traditionary lore and language brought from their Eastern homes was longest preserved unaffected by religious changes, foreign conquest, and unrestricted external commerce. And this traditionary lore and language survived, in various parts of the island, the domination of Rome and the conquest of the Romanized Britons by various Teutonic tribes. That lore and language still exist, and, as I have proved in my Gomer, contain a philosophy unknown to the sages of Greece and Rome, and full of spiritual truth and life. The creed of the Druid, before it, like all other secret systems, was corrupted and debased, contained many truths, which prepared its votaries for the willing reception of Christianity; and some of the symbolical figures of expression occurring in the Scriptures, which represent the Deity as the Rock of Ages, and our Saviour as the stone hewn out of the mountain, and his doctrines as living water springing from the Rock, were in such close connection with his own system, that we need not wonder that the Christianized Druid appropriated as a motto, and that from the earliest period, the ancient proverb, -“Da r maen gyda r Efengyl!" 1 "Good is the Maen with the Gospel." PRIMITIVE TRADITION. A Letter to the EDITOR of the EDINBURGH REVIEW. Στρεπτὴ δὲ γλῶσσ ̓ ἐστὶ βροτῶν, πολλοι δ ̓ ἔνι μῦθοι, Iliad xx. ver. 248. "Flexile the human tongue, and stored with many myths of varied form, and words are freely bandied to and fro. And when you speak, expect a likely answer to each say." DEAR SIR,The reviews connected with classical scholarship, which at an earlier period used to distinguish the celebrated journal of which you are the present editor, have been fewer of late years. I have therefore to thank you for the long and elaborate article on my Homerus, which you have admitted into your 155th number. Nor would I have addressed you upon the present occasion, had I not cause to fear, that many scholars, whose attention I am anxious to obtain, may, from the tone of that review, be deterred from personally examining the theories which I have proposed, and from duly considering the induction by which I have attempted to verify them. Were I sure that every sound scholar who may read the review, would also honour my Homerus with an attentive perusal, I should not hesitate on the line of conduct to be adopted by me, but leave the final decision to such a reader's unbiassed judgment. But as it is a certainty, that, as an immediate result, fifty will read the review for every single individual who will read the Homerus, I have taken the present step, on the probable supposition that many will read a letter to the editor of the Edinburgh Review, who are not likely to read a book which, from its title, may be supposed to be written for scholars alone. And should two or three men of clear heads, and sound in their religious and moral principles, be induced by the present publication to examine the whole question, my present object will be fully obtained. I wish it, therefore, to be understood, that, although this letter must contain some fuller development of the principles laid down in the Homerus, it is primarily intended for those who have read the review, and not the Homerus; and, consequently, that the reader of the latter will find in it much that is contained in that publication. Now, had the reviewer given anything like a fair statement either of the theory on which the doctrines propounded in the Homerus were based, or of the line of argument by which such theory was supported, any repetition on my part would be unnecessary. But, as the reviewer has either suppressed or misinterpreted all that I have adduced under these heads which can be regarded as important to the right understanding of the question, no choice is left to me. And, although I carefully abstained "from entering into any formal line of speculative argument," and confined myself to a statement of truths apparently developed in the Homeric literature, yet I was fully aware, and so, if I mistake not, is my reviewer also, that the most interesting questions connected with the true history of man, with his relation to this world and its Creator, are opened up in the Homerus; and that the dispute is not de paupere regno. In writing Homerus, I was anxious, on the one hand, to refute an error-on the other, to establish a truth. The error was thus described in the preface to the Homerus: "It seems to the author, that ever since the days of Epicurus, there has existed a popular belief, that man came from the hands of his Creator equally ignorant and helpless, and that by degrees he advanced from strength to strength, until he finally reached that high degree of civilization in which we find him when profane history first presents him to our view.” |