LETTER II,

London, May 15, 1799.

ALTHOUN LTHOUн I know you to be well grounded in general history, and, of course, have some previous acquaintance with that of the country from which I now write to you, it may not be amiss to desire you will have in recollection, even as you direct your course over the cliffs of Albion, that the people you design to visit, are the descendents of those hardy tribes who lived upon the produce of the chace, cloathing themselves with the skins which they threw off when they were in action; making thus the animals, which were the objects of their pursuit, supply them at once with food, raiment, and a defence against the rigours of the precarious climate in which they were born-that their huts were scattered over the face of the island, without regularity or arrangement; their choice of a particular spot,

being influenced by its happier supply of water and wood-that much of their bodies were exposed, and ferociously coloured with terrific figures, either to protect them from the weather, or to affright their foes *—that their towns, if,

* "When the chill breeze of morning overspread,
Wav'd the dark boughs, that roof'd his sylvan bed,
Up the light Briton sprung-to chace the deer
Through Humber's vales, or healthy Cheviot drear
Languid at noon his fainting limbs he cast

On the warm bank, and fought his coarse repast;
With acorns shaken from the neighbouring oak,
Or sapless bark that from the trunk he broke,
His meal he made; and in the cavern'd dell,
Drank the hoarse wave that down the rough rocks fell.
In open sky he rests his head, and sees

The stars that twinkle through the waving trees.

On his bare breast the chilling dews descend;

His yellow locks the midnight tempest rend.

"Such were the race, who drank the light of day, When lost in western waves Britannia lay; Content they wander'd o'er the heaths and moors, Nor thought that ocean roll'd round other shores; Viewing the fires, that blaz'd around their skies, 'Mid the wide world of waters set and rise, They vainly deem'd the twinkling orbs of light For them alone illum'd the vault of night: For them alone the golden lamp of day Held its bright progress through th' etherial way." ABORIGINAL BRITONS.

as has been observed, a collection of miserable tenements, could deserve that name -were mostly built upon the coasts: where the poorest shed of a modern fisherman, in any of the seaside villages to which I shall have the pleasure of conducting you, would have been thought a magnificent palace, even for the chieftain of their tribes-that the commodities of barter, in the majestic island, which is now the emporium and grand mart of the world, were chiefly the hides of those savage beasts, on whose flesh they feasted-that unconscious of the endearing ties of affection and love, poligamy was permitted to a more than brutal extent, and, finally, that the government, which, with more of private and of public good, and less of evil, is now, perhaps, the most excellent, and certainly the most happy of any upon the globe, was simply derived from the authority of the parent, who having given life, had, as it was thought, a natural right to dispose of the gift as circum

* Uxores habent deni duodenique inter se comniunes. Cæsar de bello Gallico.

stances required-and, moreover, that religion, which has now for so many centuries held out the blessed influence of the mild system of JESUS CHRIST, was in the beginning dictated to the ancient inhabitants of Britain by those barbarous teachers the Druids,* who, have been so variously represented,-by some as a fraternity not less simple and guiltless, than the

But they derived all their military and, perhaps, mok of their energy as men from their BARDS.

whose magic fingers strung

Hail, ye who wandered by romantic streams,
With harps that glitter'd to the moon's pale beams;
Sooth'd by your midnight hymns was many a ghost,
Whose cold bones whiten'd Avon's dreary coast.

"Fir'd by your magic songs, the Briton pour'd
A ten-fold fury; dar'd the uplifted sword;
Envy'd the shades of chiefs in battle slain,
And burn'd to join them on th' etherial plain;
For warrior souls, ye sung, would deathless bloom,
When the cold limbs lay mould'ring in the tomb.

with heart on fire,

They heard the heroic strains of Cadwall's lyre;
In Mador's verse renew its mortal toils.

And shine through Hoel's songs in hoftile spoils."

Bards, awful by their practical virtue, no less than by their professional character, and benignly chastizing, or reproving, vices from which they were themselves, exempt-and as one of their advocate historians expresses it, "using no other arms than the reverence due to integrity," while, by others, they have been drawn as a sanguinary brotherhood, which sought the refuge of woods and caves to perpetrate unequalled depredations under the mask of piety, sacrificing human victims, and accumulating the absurdities of superstition on the horrors of murder. The truth lies, possibly, between both of these descriptions; yet it seems on all hands agreed, that the original possessors of the fair land to which you meditate a visit, were under the controul of these persons, who gradually acquired such an ascendancy,* that they were in

the Druid priest impress'd

A sacred horror on the savage breast.

Midst rocks and wastes their GROVE tremendous rose :
O'er the rude altars hung in dread repose

A twilight pale; like the dim sickly noon,
When the mid-sun retires behind the moon.