ed with the power of
uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper
ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in
what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to
it was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English
rhyme as follows:

"Goddess of shades and huntress, who at will
Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,
On thy _third_ reign, the earth, look now and tell
What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek?"

To which the oracle returned the following answer:

"Far to the west, in the ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul a land there lies--
Sea-girt it lies--where giants dwelt of old.
Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend
Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting home."

It is scarcely necessary to say that this meant Britain. Brutus,
following the directions which the oracle had given him, set sail from
the island, and proceeded to the westward through the Mediterranean
Sea. He arrived at the Pillars of Hercules. This was the name by which
the Rock of Gibraltar and the corresponding promontory on the opposite
coast, across the straits, were called in those days; these cliffs
having been built, according to ancient tales, by Hercules, as
monuments set up to mark the extreme limits of his western wanderings.
Brutus passed through the strait, and then, turning northward, coasted
along the shores of Spain.

At length, after enduring great privations and suffering, and
encountering the extreme dangers to which their frail barks were
necessarily exposed from the surges which roll in perpetually from
the broad Atlantic Ocean upon the coast of Spain and into the Bay of
Biscay, they arrived safely on the shores of Britain. They landed and
explored the interior. They found the island robed in the richest
drapery of fruitfulness and verdure, but it was unoccupied by any
thing human. There were wild beasts roaming in the forests, and the
remains of a race of giants in dens and caves--monsters as diverse
from humanity as the wolves. Brutus and his followers attacked all
these occupants of the land. They drove the wild beasts into the
mountains of Scotland and Wales, and killed the giants. The chief of
them, whose name was Gogmagog, was hurled by one of Brutus's followers
from the summit of one of the chalky cliffs which bound the island
into the sea.

The island of Great Britain is in the latit