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NOTES. 399turn aspired to universal dominion. The Goths or Germans, aPersian race, fetching the circuit of the Caspian Sea, poured inupon the Celts in Germany, from the norUi, with relentless barbarity.Owing to these and other causes, the Continent of Europewas almost one scene of turbulence, rapine, and bloodshed.The peculiar studies of the Druids required solitude and retirement.This was only to be found in Britain, where they fixedtheir chief establishment, and thither (as Caesar informs us) resortedfrom the Continent all such as wished to study Druidismto perfection.The date of this Druidical establishment in Britaincannot be ascertained, but we may safely fix it five centuriesbefore the time of Cassar. A shorter period would be whollyinsufficient to make the Druids in Gaul forget the origin of theinstitution, and resign the precedency to those in Britain.Thegame wary prudence and sound policy which pointed out Britain,as the place of greatest security for the chief establishmentof the Druids, would also point it out as the safest asylum fortheir records and manuscripts ; and hence the most importantmanuscripts of Gaul would be deposited in Britain.Ireland was occupied by the same Celtic race which inhabitedBritainand Gaul, and had unquestionably the same civil andreligious institutions.Toland well remarks, that Druidism wasonly coextended with the Celtic dialects. In Caesar's time, aswe have already seen, the British Druids were the teachers ofthe Gauls; and it would be absurd to suppose that the Irish,with whom the intercourse was equally easy, did not participatethe same advantage.Unfortunately the Roman page throws nolight on the early history of Ireland, else we might probably find,that, even in Ccesar's time, the Druids of Ireland were nothinginferior to those of Britain. Indeed, at this \ery period, theDruids of Britain might regard Ireland as their last asylum.In Csesar's time, the Druids were subjected to no proscrlplioanor persecution. From his whole account it appears thatthey had the use of letters,—that they were at least partially acquaintedwith the Greek and Roman languages,—-that they werenuijiprous aud dispersed over the whole extent of Gau),—that3 E 2