heard of thee, now let us experience them!" Presently he appeared to them in his likeness, saying "Behold! I am here, for you have called me." And he began to aid them with the yards and cables, and other of the ship's tackle, and immediately the tempest ceased; but when they came to his church, which they had never seen before, they knew it without any indication, and then they returned thanks to God for their liberation, which he had taught them to attribute to the divine mercy, rather than to their own desert. It is to this notable story that St. Nicholas owes his position as the patron and friend of sailors.

St. Castor, one of the local saints of the Rhine and Moselle, was born at Carden, in the vicinity of Coblentz, to which place his remains were afterwards carried, and a church erected to his honour. He is represented as saving a sinking ship, according to a tradition illustrative of an event in his life.

In the view taken by some writers, who explain these myths as metaphorical visions of actual occurrences, the sinking ship would appear as the Church in great tribulation, saved by the pious care of St. Castor. A similar explanation will apply to that of St. Nicholas, by whose aid the ship, i. e. the Church, is conducted through the storms of the world, or adversity, into a safe harbour of peace and rest. The story of St. Bertinus, one of the saints of the Flemish calendar, will bear the like construction.

St. Bertinus was one of three holy men, Mummilinus and Bertram being the others, who came into the diocese of St. Audomar or Omer, to advance the cause of God. Desiring to erect a monastery they were unable to fix upon a proper site. There was a lake near, which when the east wind blew vehemently imitated the flux and reflux of the ocean. Consulting together, these soldiers of Christ entered into a ship without a steersman, so that they might go whither the Holy Spirit directed. The little bark took its way across, the saints praying and singing psalms to heaven; when behold, as the psalmody in due order came to that verse, "Hæc requies mea in seculum seculi, &c." and the ship was carried to the shore with a wonderful celerity, by the guidance, it is supposed, of an angelical helm. Thereupon they set themselves diligently to work and constructed the monastery, and St. Bertin was made first abbot. He died in 698. In this story the ship may be the Church under the influence of the divine spirit, which directs the saint to the place for constructing a monastery. St. Bertin is represented in monastic habits, with pastoral staff in one hand, and a ship in the other. Other saints have this emblem, such as St. Ursula, St. Restituta, and St. Melanius of Rennes, but they are for the most part known by other emblems, and the above seem more calculated to illustrate this subject.

Illustrated by the

NO name is more intimately connected with the progress of historical literature and archæology at the present day than that of the author of the work before us. No one has more diligently or more successfully laboured to place both upon a sound and solid basis, to guide the student of the history of our country from much that is erroneous to new and rich stores of information previously

concealed or imperfectly developed. This, his most recent work, will not disgrace any of its numerous predecessors, for it evinces the same extensive reading, acute perception, and power of comparison, which are peculiarly required in combination to do justice to a subject so comprehensive, and of which the materials are often obscure and scanty, or ill-defined and entangled.

The plan on which Mr. Wright's volume is constructed is the chronological arrangement of the documentary or historical evidence bearing upon the important epochs which precede the introduction of Christianity into Britain, illustrated by existing remains. While, for this purpose, the best works have been consulted, the opinions of their authors have not been slavishly followed; often they have been rigorously tested, and, where found to be erroneous, judiciously corrected. Throughout the book there is an originality of thought, not only in general views but also on particular events and objects, joined with a pleasing and popular style, which fix the attention of the reader and carry him agreeably and instructedly through its extent of between four and five hundred closely printed pages.

The great difficulty of distinguishing the remains of the Celts, the Romans and their allies, the Saxons, and the Northmen, has been felt by every one who has examined the early antiquities of our country. It was noticed that in certain districts, and under certain circumstances, implements and weapons in stone prevailed; that in other places, and under different circumstances, objects in bronze were most numerous; and again, in other parts, and at later periods of time, iron appeared the more usual material. On these facts the archæologists of the north established the system of ages or periods. We here give Mr. Wright's views on the subject, which are worthy of attention:

But there is another danger against which the student in British archæology is to be especially warned; the old scholars failed in not following a sufficiently strict course of comparison and deduction; but some of the new ones run into the opposite extreme of generalising too hastily, and they thus form systems specious and attractive in appearance, but without foundation in truth. Such I am convinced is the system of archæological periods which has been adopted by the antiquaries of the north, and which a vain attempt has been made to introduce into this country. There is something we may perhaps say poetical, certainly imaginative, in talking of an age of stone, or an age of bronze, or an age of iron, but such divisions have no meaning in history, which cannot be treated as a physical science, and its objects arranged

in genera and species. We have to do with races of mankind, and we can only arrange the objects which come under our examination according to the peoples to whom they belonged, and as they illustrate divisions alluded to are in themselves intheir manners and history. In fact, the correct, and so far is the discovery of implements of stone, or of bronze, or of iron, in itself a proof of any particular age, that we often find them together. It is true that there may have been a period when society was in so barbarous a state, that sticks or stones were the only implements with which men knew how to furnish themselves; but I doubt if the anti

quary has yet found any evidence of such a period. Stone implements are certainly found with articles of metal, and it may fairly be doubted if the stone implements in general, found either in these islands or in the north, belong to a period antecedent to that in which metals were in common use. In the early period to which the present volume refers, intercommunication was slow and difficult, and an individual in any obscure village could not, as at present, send off by post to any distant town and get immediately the material he wanted in any given quantity. It was thus necessary to use such materials as came to hand, and there is no possible reason why one man should not possess a weapon or a tool formed of stone, while his richer or more fortunate contemporary had one of iron or of bronze. This latter is the metal found almost exclusively in what seem to be the earliest sepulchral interments; but we are not sufficiently acquainted with the manners and sentiments of the people to whom they belonged, to say that there were not some particular reasons why the deceased preferred articles of bronze rather than other metals. Perhaps it was looked upon as more precious. What was the origin of bronze but the attempt to harden copper in countries where iron was not known, or could not be procured? it is a mixed metal, and it is absurd to suppose that its use could have preceded that of iron in countries where the latter metal was abundant. We must also bear in mind that iron undergoes much more rapid decomposition; and if even in interments of the Anglo Saxon period we very often find scarcely a trace remaining of what we know were articles composed of that metal, what must be the case with regard to similar interments made six or seven hundred years earlier, or possibly at a still more remote period?

The archeologist will be led to reconsider many received opinions, and probably to abandon a few notions he

may have formed from insufficient or defective evidence, as, for instance, the questions relative to the dates and uses of the so-called Celts, the British or the Roman parentage of the bronze leaf-shaped swords, and the uses and origin of the rude stone monuments down to the grand and mysterious structure called Stonehenge. On this subject the author writes,

Long after the people who raised them had passed away, and when their meaning, or the object for which they were erected, were alike forgotten, these monuments of stone continued to be regarded by the peasantry with reverence, which, combined with a certain degree of mysterious fear, degenerated into a sort of superstitious worship. In this feeling originated legends connected with them, and the popular names which are often found attached to them. Stonehenge was called the Giants' Dance (chorea gigantum), a name no doubt once connected with a legend which has been superseded by the story attached to it by Geoffrey of Monmouth. A circle in Cornwall, of which we have given a sketch on a former page, is called Dance Maine, or the dance of stones, and is said to be the representation of a party of young damsels who were turned into stones because they danced on the Sabbath day. According to a somewhat similar legend, a party of soldiers, who came to destroy Long Compton, were changed into the Rollrich stones in Oxfordshire. The people of Britany declare that the extraordinary multitude of stones arranged upright in lines at Carnac, was an army of pagans changed into stones by St. Cornilly. As

we have seen, the Saxons believed that a

cromlech in Berkshire was a workshop of their mythic smith Weland. A cromlech on Marlborough Downs is called the Devil's Den. Legends like these, which are found in every part of our island, are generally good evidence of the great antiquity of the monuments to which they relate. In France, as in England, and indeed in most countries, they are usually connected in the popular belief with fairies or with demons-and in England, with Robin Hood. In France this latter personage is replaced by Gargantua, a name made generally celebrated by the extraordinary romance of Rabelais. A cromlech near the village of Toury, in Britany, is called Gargantua's stone; a not uncommon name for the single stone or ménhir is palet de Gargantua (Gargantua's quoit). A very common name for cromlechs among the peasantry of France is fairies' tables, or devils' tables, and in one or two inGENT. MAG. VOL. XXXVIII.

stances they have obtained the name of Cæsar's table; the covered alleys, or more complicated cromlechs, are similarly named fairies' grottos, or fairy rocks. The single stones are sometimes called fairies' or devils' seats. The prohibition

to worship stones occurring so frequently in the earlier Christian ecclesiastical laws and ordinances, relates no doubt to these druidical monuments, and was often the cause of their destruction. Traces of this worship still remain. In some instances people passed through the druidical monuments for trial, or for purification, or as a mode of defensive charm. It is still a

practice among the peasantry at Columbiers, in France, for young girls who want husbands, to climb upon the cromlech called the Pierre-levée, place there a piece At of money, and then jump down. Guerande, with the same object, they depose in the crevices of a Celtic monument bits of rose-coloured wool tied with tinsel. The women of Croisic dance round a ménhir. It is the popular belief in Anjou, that the fairies, as they descended the mountains spinning by the way, brought down the druidical stones in their aprons, and placed them as they are now found.

In the department of the volume allotted to "the Roman," the author carries his reader with him through the towns, stations, and castra of Roman Britain in the routes of the ancient

itineraries, pointing out in a sort of panoramic view their former and their present state, what has been divulged by inscriptions of their inhabitants, or of occurrences connected with them or their customs. It is of course impossible to trace the sites of all the nuroad-books; but very many of them are merous places laid down in the ancient well ascertained, and by the safe system which is now being adopted by our few working and excavating antiquaries, others may be expected to be identified.

Mr. Wright does not allow the interest he has excited in his readers to flag; he sets before them men and manners as they were, the implements and weapons of the soldier and the artizan, the altars of the deities worshipped in Britain, the houses and other buildings. In speaking of the towns and stations he observes,

From the dilapidated state in which the walls of the Roman stations in this country now present themselves, we cannot form a perfect idea of their appearance when entire. The walls of Chester, and probably those of other places, were 2 H