the Gallic Druids referred as the standard for their practices.[52] We
may safely, therefore, take the pictures given us by him and others,
as supplying a representation of what took place in our land ere the
Romans entered it.

H. 3.--The earliest testimony is that of Julius Caesar himself, in his
well-known sketch of contemporary Druidism ('De Bello Gallico,' vi.
14-20). He tells us that the Druids were the ministers of religion,
the sacrificial priesthood of the nation, the authorized expounders of
the Divine will. All education and jurisprudence was in their hands,
and their sentences of excommunication were universally enforced. The
Gallic Druids were under the dominion of a Primate, who presided at
the annual Chapter of the Order, and was chosen by it; a disputed
election occasionally ending in an appeal to arms. As a rule, however,
Druids were supposed not to shed blood, they were free from all
obligation to military service, and from all taxation of every kind.
These privileges enabled them to recruit their ranks--for they were
not an hereditary caste--from the pick of the national youth, in spite
of the severe discipline of the Druidical novitiate. So great was the
mass of sacred literature required to be committed to memory that a
training of twenty years was sometimes needed. All had to be learnt
orally, for the matter was too sacred to be written down, though
the Druids were well acquainted with writing, and used the Greek
alphabet,[53] if not the Greek language,[54] for secular purposes.
Caesar's own view is that this refusal to allow the inditing of their
sacred books was due to two causes: first, the fear lest the secrets
of the Order should thus leak out, and, secondly, the dread lest
reading should weaken memory, "as, in fact, it generally does." Even
so, amongst the Brahmans there are, to this day, many who can not only
repeat from end to end the gigantic mass of Vedic literature, but who