ion in which they were confirmed by some imprudent
words of the legate, threatening to extirpate, or, what appeared to them
scarcely less dreadful, to transplant their nation. Their natural
bravery thus hardened into despair, and inhabiting a country very
difficult of access, they presented an impenetrable barrier to the
progress of that commander; insomuch that, wasted with continual cares,
and with the mortification to find the end of his affairs so little
answerable to the splendor of their beginning, Ostorius died of grief,
and left all things in confusion.

The legates who succeeded to his charge did little more for about sixty
years than secure the frontiers of the Roman province. But in the
beginning of Nero's reign the command in Britain was devolved on
Suetonius Paulinus, a soldier of merit and experience, who, when he
came to view the theatre of his future operations, and had well
considered the nature of the country, discerned evidently that the war
must of necessity be protracted to a great length, if he should be
obliged to penetrate into every fastness to which the enemy retired, and
to combat their flying parties one by one. He therefore resolved to make
such a blow at the head as must of course disable all the inferior
members.

The island then called Mona, now Anglesey, at that time was the
principal residence of the Druids. Here their councils were held, and
their commands from hence were dispersed among all the British nations.
Paulinus proposed, in reducing this their favorite and sacred seat, to
destroy, or at least greatly to weaken, the body of the Druids, and
thereby to extinguish the great actuating principle of all the Celtic
people, and that which was alone capable of communicating order and
energy to their operations.

Whilst the Roman troops were passing that strait which divides this
island from the continent of Britain, they halted on a sudden,--not
checked by the resistance of the enemy, but suspended by a spectacle of
an unusual and altogether surprising nature. On every side of the
British army were seen bands of Druids in their most sacred habits
surrounding the troops, lifting their hands to heaven, devoting to death
their enemies, and animating their disciples to religious frenzy by the
uncouth ceremonies of a savage ritual, and the horrid mysteries of a
superstition familiar with blood. The female Druids also moved about in
a troubled order, their hair dishevelled, their garments