century, and one great mistake in these investigations has been the
supposing that the Welsh of the twelfth, or even of the sixth
century, were wiser as well as more Pagan than their neighbours.'

Why, what a wonderful thing is this! We have, in the first place,
the most weighty and explicit testimony,--Strabo's, Caesar's,
Lucan's,--that this race once possessed a special, profound,
spiritual discipline, that they were, to use Mr. Nash's words, 'wiser
than their neighbours.' Lucan's words are singularly clear and
strong, and serve well to stand as a landmark in this controversy, in
which one is sometimes embarrassed by hearing authorities quoted on
this side or that, when one does not feel sure precisely what they
say, how much or how little; Lucan, addressing those hitherto under
the pressure of Rome, but now left by the Roman civil war to their
own devices, says:-

'Ye too, ye bards, who by your praises perpetuate the memory of the
fallen brave, without hindrance poured forth your strains. And ye,
ye Druids, now that the sword was removed, began once more your
barbaric rites and weird solemnities. To you only is given knowledge
or ignorance (whichever it be) of the gods and the powers of heaven;
your dwelling is in the lone heart of the forest. From you we learn,
that the bourne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the
pale realm of the monarch below; in another world his spirit survives
still;--death, if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring
life.'

There is the testimony of an educated Roman, fifty years after
Christ, to the Celtic race being then 'wiser than their neighbours;'
testimony all the more remarkable because civilised nations, though