“Of course, he connected the bards with Druidism, which he said they had kept alive. A good many sectarians would have said that he himself was as much a Druid as a Christian. He accepted the resurrection of the dead. He did not reject the Druid belief in transmigration of souls. He identified Druidism with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament, but saw in it also a pacific and virtually Christian spirit. He affirmed that Ancient British Christianity was strongly tinctured by Druidism, and it was his opinion that the ‘Dark Ages’ were only dark through our lack of light. He hated the stories of Cæsar and others about human sacrifices, and would say to opponents, ‘You are talking of what you don’t understand--of what none but a Welshman and a British bard _can possibly_ understand.’ He compared the British mythology favourably with the ‘barbarous’ Scandinavian mythology of Thor and Odin. He studied whatever he could come at concerning Druidism, with the ‘peculiar bias and firm persuasion’ that ‘more wisdom and beneficence than is popularly attributed to them’ would be revealed. “In the French Revolution he recognised the spirit of ‘Man, Liberty, and Light.’ His friends deserted him. He in turn was willing to leave them for America, ‘to fly from the numerous injuries he had received from the laws of this land.’ He had, furthermore, the hope of discovering the colony settled in America, as some believed, by the mediæval Welsh prince Madoc.” “That was like Borrow, too,” suggested Mr Stodham. “It was, and the likeness is even closer; for, like Borrow, Iolo did not go to America. Nevertheless, to prepare himself for the adventure, he lived out of doors for a time, sleeping in trees and on the ground, and incurring rheumatism.