Dr. Stuart, writing of the Druids, says their chief deity was Mercury, of whom they have many images. They also worship Apollo and Mars, and Jupiter and Minerva. They held a meeting at a certain time of the year in a consecrated spot. They used rites of augury from the slaughter of human victims. According to Strabo, three classes of persons were much venerated among the Gauls—the Bards, Druids, and Soothsayers.

CÆsar, from whom Dr. Stuart largely borrows, tells us that the whole of the Gallic nation was exceedingly superstitious. People of distinction who laboured under the more fatal diseases, and those who engaged in battles and other dangerous undertakings, either immolated human beings, or vowed that they would immolate themselves. They employed the Druids as their ministers at those sacrifices. It was thought the divine nature of the immortal gods could not be propitiated but by human life being substituted for human life. There were, CÆsar continues, effigies of immense magnitude, interwoven with osiers, filled with living men. Then these former being ignited, the latter perished in the flames. The people thought that the sacrifices of guilty human victims, apprehended in the act of theft, robbery, or any other crime, were more agreeable to the immortal gods than those of innocent persons; but when the supply of culprits failed, non-guilty victims were sacrificed. All the Gauls boasted that they were descended from Dis as their father—a tradition communicated to them by the Druids. Funeral rites, considering the culture of the Gauls, were magnificent and sumptuous. Everything dear to the deceased, when alive, was carried into the fire. Even the animals did not escape; and, to manifest high esteem for a person of note, his slaves and clients who were beloved by him, were cremated together after the obsequies demanded by justice had been performed.

Pliny writes that the Druids exhibited the herb vervain in the exercise of their rites. They had tallies, consisting of sprigs lopped from a fruit-bearing tree, marked in a particular manner, thrown into a garment or covered with a veil, and drawn out by chance, through which means, it was supposed, the will of heaven was made known.

From various sources of information we know that the Druids had recourse to sortilege by fire. It was customary for a nobleman to take the entrails of a sacrificed animal in his hands, to walk barefooted three times through the embers of an expiring fire, and then carry them to a Druid performing at the altar. If the nobleman escaped unhurt, it was reckoned a good omen, but if injured, it was deemed unlucky to the country and himself. When a victim was put to death by the sword, the Druids who investigated the deed, pretended to discover future events by the manner in which he fell, the flavouring of the reeking blood, and the quivering of the body in the agonies of death.

The wonder-working eggs possessed by the Druids were insignia of a sacred character, set in gold, and worn suspended from the neck.The Rev. John B. Pratt, in his work on the Druids, says: "These eggs were wholly artificial. Some of them were blue, some white, a third sort green, and a fourth regularly variegated with all these colours. They are said to have been worn by different orders—the white by the Druids; the blue by the presiding bards; the green by the Vains; and those with the three colours blended were pendants of the disciples. That the secret of manufacturing these amulets was totally unknown in Britain, except to the Druids, is thought most probable; and the secret of discovering things by looking into a globule of ink, which, it is asserted by some, the Egyptian jugglers still possess, may be a remnant of the ancient sortilege by means of the Druid's egg." Probably the coloured eggs children play with at Easter were anciently intended to represent the Druidical eggs.

Mr. Pratt concludes, that if it be true that the Druids came from the East, and that the traces of their existence there run back, as some suppose, into the remotest antiquity, "it is not altogether preposterous," he continues, "to suppose that their origin is to be dated from the dispersion at Babel.... Balaam, the Eastern magician, was probably the Arch-Druid of the mountainous country in which he lived. The offerings he made were at the high places of Baal, and for the purpose of enchantments, although he was not ignorant of the Most High.... The magi, or wise men of the East, probably were Druids, who, from their knowledge of astronomy, at once detected the star which indicated the fulfilment of Balaam's prophecy."

The earliest name borne by the island of Iona, so far as known in modern times, was Innis-nan Druidneach, or Isle of the Druids. The Druids retained their power not only in Iona until the year 563 or 564, but also on the mainland and in the islands. Mullingar is supposed to have been the last place in Ireland where the Druids had a residence. In the beginning of the last century a number of gold coins, found on the hill Karn Bre, near Truro, were thought to be Druidical coins. Some of them, Mr. Davies thinks, were impressed with rude hieroglyphics, symbolical of Ceridiven. Objects of different kinds are combined in one compound figure. To an arc or half moon is added the head of a bird, probably symbolical of the mother of the mystical egg. On other coins found there, magical ceremonies are represented, and on others the mystical sow appears sketched out.

In Druidical times there were rocking stones, or stones of judgment. They were large, some of them weighing fifty tons, and having sharp edges, on which they stood nicely balanced. A rocking stone of judgment, says Mr. Rust, "had been intended to test difficult questions, which could not be proved, disproved, or solved in the ordinary way, or for want of evidence, or which required the divine interposition of some particular deity, likely a bloodthirsty one; for as they had different deities, different temples, and different altars, they had also different judgment stones attached to them, and different ordeals through which the tried individuals, whether devotees, criminals, or captives, had to pass. These judgment stones had been anciently very common." According to the number of times a stone oscillated or refused to oscillate, the Druids determined to convict or acquit the suspected person.

Of the misletoe, and the esteem in which it was held by the Druids, we have written in page 127. This parasitical plant was regarded as a charm of no ordinary virtue. But the misletoe was only one of many articles they had possessing occult virtue.

Glass rings, manufactured by Druidical priests, were worn by the ancient Britons, as preventatives against witchcraft and the machinations of evil spirits.

A ridiculous legend is told concerning Stonehenge, the supposed Druidical temple near Salisbury. Aurelianus Ambrosius, a famous general of the ancient Britons, of Roman extraction, was, at the request of the Britons, sent over with ten thousand men to assist them against the Saxons, whom Vortigern had invited into Britain. Ambrosius had such successes against the Saxons that the Britons chose him for their king, and compelled Vortigern to give up to him all the western parts of the kingdom divided by the Roman highway, called Watling Street. Ultimately Ambrosius became sole monarch of Britain. Geoffrey says that this monarch built Stonehenge. Ambrosius, we are told, coming to a monastery where lay buried three hundred British lords who had been massacred by Hengist, resolved to perpetuate the memory of this action by raising a monument over their remains.

By the advice of Tremounus, Archbishop of Caerleon, Ambrosius consulted Merlin, the celebrated magician, as to how he should proceed. Merlin recommended him to send to Ireland for certain great stones, called chorea gigantum, the giant's dance, placed in a circle on a hill called Killaci, which had been brought there by giants from the farthest borders of Africa. A strong force was, in accordance with this advice, sent to Ireland, but the king of that country derided the folly of the Britons in undertaking such a ridiculous expedition, and opposed them in battle. The Irish king was vanquished, and, by the direction and assistance of Merlin, who had accompanied the expedition, the wonderful stones were conveyed to Salisbury, and, by order of Ambrosius, placed over the graves of the British lords. These gravestones are what are now called Stonehenge. Such stories, as may be expected, are discredited by historians, but our best antiquaries disagree as to the origin of these monuments of antiquity.

Gale, Dickenson, and others say the Druids borrowed their philosophy and religion from the Jews and Eastern heathen nations. Our older antiquarians believe that cromlechs are Druidical altars, in imitation of older heathen altars—a theory supported by reference to the stones called Petroma, near the temple of Eleusinian Damater in Arcadia: The Philistines pointed to the Deluge in their hieroglyphics of the serpent and mundane egg, the history which the serpent is supposed to designate being that of Noah, and the egg being reckoned an emblem of the ark, from the circumstance of it containing the rudiments of future life. The serpent is not unfrequently represented when reference is made to the betrayal of Eve.

People making acknowledgment to the gods for continual benefits, surrendered part of their increase for the service of the altar. Egyptian offerings consisted of fruits and herbs, while shepherds offered firstlings of their flocks. For this cause the Egyptians disliked shepherds almost with the cruel hatred Cain bore his brother Abel.

As the oak and misletoe were sacred to the Druids, so were they to the Israelites in their days of declension. And in Greece we find the famous oracle of Jupiter at the oaks of Dodona. To the ancient inhabitants of Italy the misletoe was a sacred emblem; and the golden branches of Virgil were none other than those of the misletoe.

As the Druids studied the heavenly bodies as a book (so says Origen), the heathen learned through the discovery of a new star the birth of a great person. From Virgil, it appears, it was commonly imagined the gods sent stars to point the way to their favourites in perplexity. The Jews entertained similar opinions.

According to Suckford, the ancients believed that heroes and other great men were transferred at death to some bright planet. In consequence of such belief, eminent persons were deified. Julius CÆsar was canonised, because it was thought he was translated to a new star, discovered at the hour of his death.