ers of idle curiosity and wild conjecture;
while all of them become of use, and sometimes of great moment, when
placed in a public collection beside their fellows. Like stray single
words or letters that have dropt from out the Book of Time, they
themselves, individually, reveal nothing, but when placed alongside of
other words and letters from the same book, they gradually form--under
the fingers of the archaeologist--into lines, and sentences, and
paragraphs, which reveal secret and stirring legends of the workings of
the human mind, and human hand, in ages of which, perchance, we have no
other existing memorials.

In attempting to read the cypher of these legends aright, let us guard
against one fault which was unfortunately too often committed in former
days, and which is perhaps sometimes committed still. Let us not fall
into the mistake of fancying that everything antiquarian, which we do
not see at first sight the exact use of, must necessarily be something
very mysterious. Old distaff-whorls, armlets, etc., have, in this
illogical spirit, been sometimes described as Druidical amulets and
talismen; ornamented rings and bosses from the ancient rich Celtic
horse-harness, discovered in sepulchral barrows, have been published as
Druidical astronomical instruments; and in the last century some
columnar rock arrangement in Orkney was gravely adduced by Toland as a
Druidical pavement. It is this craving after the mysterious, this
reprehensible irrationalism, that has brought, indeed, the whole subject
of Druidism into much modern contempt with many archaeologists. No doubt
Druidism is a most interesting and a most important subject for due and
calm investigation, and the facts handed down to us in regard to it by
Caesar, Diodorus, Mela, Strabo, Pliny, and other classic and hagiological
authors, are full of the gravest archaeological bearings; but no doubt
also many antiquarian relics, both large and small, have been
provokingly called Druidical, merely because their origin and object
were unknown. We have not, for instance, a particle of direct evidence
for the too common belief that our stone circles were temples which the
Druids used for worship; or that our cromlechs were their sacrificial
altars. In fact, formerly the equanimity of the old theoretical class of
archaeologists was disturbed by these leviathan notions about Druids and
Druidesses as much as the marine zoology of the poor sailor was long
disturbed by his