orms of religion which give to the manuscripts
their strongest fascination.

Many of us miss all that is most worth learning in old books through
regarding anything in them that is unfamiliar as merely quaint, if not
ridiculous. This attitude seals a book as effectually and as
permanently as it seals a sensitive human being. There is only one way
of understanding these old writers, and that is to forget ourselves
entirely and to try to look at the world of nature as they did. It is
not "much learning" that is required, but sympathy and imagination. In
the case of these Saxon manuscripts we are repaid a thousandfold; for
they transport us to an age far older than our own, and yet in some
ways so young that we have lost its magic key. For we learn not only
of herbs and the endless uses our forefathers made of them, but, if we
try to read them with understanding, these books open for us a magic
casement through which we look upon the past bathed in a glamour of
romance. Our Saxon ancestors may have been a rude and hardy race, but
they did not live in an age of materialism as we do. In their writings
on herbs and their uses we see "as through a glass darkly" a time when
grown men believed in elves and goblins as naturally as they believed
in trees, an age when it was the belief of everyday folk that the air
was peopled with unseen powers of evil against whose machinations
definite remedies must be applied. They believed, as indeed the people
of all ancient civilisations have believed, that natural forces and
natural objects were endued with mysterious powers whom it was
necessary to propitiate by special prayers. Not only the stars of
heaven, but springs of water and the simple wayside herbs, were to
them directly associated with unseen beings. There are times when one
is reminded forcibly of that worship of Demeter, "nearer to the Earth
which some have thought they could discern behind the definitely
national mythology of Homer." They believed that the sick could be
cured by conjurations and charms, as firmly as we believe to-day in
curing them by suggestion--is there any real difference between these
methods?--and when one reads the charms which they used in
administering their herbs one cannot help wondering whether these were
handed down traditionally from the Sumerians, those ancient
inhabitants of Mesopotamia who five thousand years before Christ used
charms for curing the sick which have now been partially deciphered