by the Roman soldiers and colonists.]

[Footnote 216: On the supposed site, etc. of this monument to Horsa, in
Kent, see Mr. Colebrook's paper in _Archaeologia_, vol. ii. p. 167; and
Halsted's _Kent_, vol. ii. p. 177. In 1631, Weever, in his _Ancient
Funeral Monuments_, p. 317, acknowledges that "stormes and time have
devoured Horsa's monument." In 1659 Phillpot, when describing the
cromlech called Kits Coty House--the alleged tomb of Catigern--speaks of
Horsa's tomb as utterly extinguished "by storms and tempests under the
conduct of time."]

ON SOME SCOTTISH MAGICAL CHARM-STONES, OR CURING-STONES.

Throughout all past time, credulity and superstition have constantly and
strongly competed with the art of medicine. There is no doubt, according
to Pliny, that the magical art began in Persia, that it originated in
medicine, and that it insinuated itself first amongst mankind under the
plausible guise of promoting health.[217] In proof of the antiquity of
the belief, this great Roman encyclopaedist cites Eudoxus, Aristotle, and
Hermippus, as averring that magical arts were used thousands of years
before the time of the Trojan war.

Assuredly, in ancient times, faith in the effects of magical charms,
amulets, talismans, etc., seems to have prevailed among all those
ancient races of whom history has left any adequate account. In modern
times a belief in their efficiency and power is still extensively
entertained amongst most of the nations of Asia and Africa. In some
European kingdoms, also, as in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, belief in them
still exists to a marked extent. In our own country, the magical
practices and superstitions of the older and darker ages persist only as
forms and varieties, so to speak, of archaeological relics,--for they
remain at the present day in comparatively a very sparse and limited
degree. They are now chiefly to be found among the uneducated, and in
outlying districts of the kingdom. But still, some practices, which
primarily sprung up in a belief in magic, are carried on, even by the
middle and higher classes of society, as diligently as they were
thousands of years ago, and without their magical origin being dreamed
of by those who follow them. The coral is often yet suspended as an
ornament around the neck of the Scottish child, without the potent and
protective magical and medicinal qualities long ago attached to it by
Dioscorides and Pliny being thought of by those who place it th