of all chasteness and beauty and delighting in quaint and fantastic mingling of things very earthly--from the simply human forms of the Greek, and the simply human conceptions of the Roman, religion enables us to guess the barrier which stood between these conquered and their conquerors. With this were connected, moreover, very serious practical consequences; a comprehensive traffic in secret remedies and charms, in which the priests played at the same time the part of physicians, and in which, alongside of the conjuring and the blessing, human sacrifices occurred, and healing of the sick by the flesh of those thus slain. That direct opposition to the foreign rule prevailed in the Druidism of this period cannot at least be proved; but, even if this were not the case, it is easy to conceive that the Roman government, which elsewhere let alone all local peculiarities of worship with indifferent toleration, contemplated this Druidical system, not merely in its extravagances but as a whole, with apprehension. The institution of the Gallic annual festival in the purely Roman capital of the country, and with the exclusion of any link attaching it to the national cultus, was evidently a counter-move of the government against the old religion of the country, with its yearly council of priests at Chartres, the centre of the Gallic land. Augustus, however, took no further direct step against Druidism than that of prohibiting any Roman citizen from taking part in the Gallic national cultus. Tiberius in his more energetic way acted with decision, and prohibited altogether this priesthood with its retinue of teachers and healing practitioners; but it does not quite speak for the practical success of this enactment that the same prohibition was issued afresh under Claudius: it is narrated of the latter that he caused a Gaul of rank to be beheaded, simply because he was convicted of having brought into application the charms customary in his own country for a good result in proceedings before the emperor. That the occupation of Britain, which had been from of old the chief seat of these priestly actings, was in good part resolved on in order thereby to get at the root of the evil, will be fully set forth in the sequel (p. 185). In spite of all this the priesthood still played an important part in the revolt which the Gauls attempted after the downfall of the Claudian dynasty; the burning of the Capitol--so the Druids preached--announced the revolution in affairs, and the beginning of the dominion of the north over the south. But, although this oracle came subsequently to be fulfilled, it was not so through this nation and in favour of its priests. The peculiarities of the Gallic worship doubtless still exerted their effect even later; when in the third century a distinctive Gallo-Roman empire came into existence for some time, Hercules played the first part on its coins partly in his Graeco-Roman form, partly as Gallic Deusoniensis or Magusanus. But of