Such rites, so it may appear to the least imaginative of us as we behold to-day the pilgrims crowding to the shrine of Our Lady, or the long processions of priests and choristers winding their way from the sculptured portals of the Cathedral to visit the Abbey of S. Père, or the Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Brèche, or through the crypt to the shrine of Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre,[4] are curiously prophetic of the history of the place. So thinking, we shall look at the western towers and note, like Gaston Latour, the bigness of the actual stones of the masonry, contrary to the usual Gothic manner, as if in reminiscence of those old Druidic piles amid which the Virgin of Chartres had been adored, long before the birth of Christ, by a mystic race, possessed of some prophetic sense of the grace in store for them. Who then were these Druids and who the Carnutes? From the Carnutes the modern name of this their town is derived, and philologists assure us that the root of the name is to be found in the word for oak, which, in Celtic, bears some resemblance to the Latin _quercus_. Similarly Évreux is derived from the word _ebvre_ = forest. All Central Gaul in those days was covered with oak forests as with a garment. Hence, it is suggested, the name of Carnutes was applied as a generic term to the dwellers in those forests, and was specialised as the title of the Chartrains _par excellence_ on account of the choice of this spot by the Druids for their deliberations and their sacrifices. It may be so. Philology is one of the most amusing diversions. It is quite as intellectual as most other parlour games, and often much more entertaining. Human as heraldry and more profitable than pedigree hunting it certainly is, but somehow it is less convincing. Therefore if anyone prefer to derive this word Carnutes from _cairn_--the stone which formed the Druidical altar and equally with oaks seems to have played an important part in their ceremonies, he may be as much right as anybody else.