r figure filled with human beings sank into the
flames--when the shouts of the multitude who stood in a dense circle
around the spot, the frenzied chants of the druids, and the despairing
shrieks of the dying victims, were drowned in the sullen roar of the
thunder--then must the fearful nature of their creed have stood forth in
all its horrors. Yet with all this, there was a sort of grandeur in the
seclusion and simplicity of their worship. All was not blood; and though
they bowed down to the Unknown God in an erring and mistaken spirit, yet
must their conception of him been fine. The God of nature and the
wilderness--the God of the tempest and the storm--was a nobler idea than
the immortalized humanities of Greek and Roman mythology, though both
had wandered equally far from the true God of Mercy and of Peace.

When Massalia was hard pressed by two Gaulish nations, she summoned, in
an evil hour, Rome to her aid. By the Roman arms her assailants were
repelled, but these allies maintained their footing in the country. They
soon subdued Liguria, and founded the town of Aquae Sextiae; the Gaulish
nation of the AEdues united with the strangers; a defensive league
entered into by the Allobroges and the Arvernes to drive them from their
shores, was defeated. The territory acquired by these victories was
organized into a Transalpine province; this province gradually went on
increasing; its communications with Italy were assured, by the Romans
obtaining possession of the passes of the Alps. In the year 118 B.C.,
the first Roman colony in Gaul was founded at Narbonne; hither, in
course of time, came the great maritime commerce which had raised
Massalia to her greatness; hither, too, flowed much of the internal
traffic of Gaul. The ships of Massalia lay rotting in her harbours, her
extensive quays lost their busy multitudes. In the fall of her naval
power, in the loss of her commercial policy, she received a just reward
for having wafted to her shores, and assisted with her forces, the
stranger who was destined to rule over the Gaulish people. The
organization of the province was completed; and from Narbonne, Roman
emissaries issuing forth, laboured, by augmenting the quarrels and
dissensions of the native tribes, to afford an opportunity for her to
extend the limits of the empire.

Driven from the shores of the Baltic by an inroad of the ocean, the two
tribes of the Kimry and the Teutones uniting, precipitated themselves,
to th