great chiefs that they could handle the tools of the smith.
Longfellow declares that —
'Since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations.
Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.'
In speaking of Basil the blacksmith,
' Who was a mighty man in the village, and honoured of all men; '
he intimates that even in the New World the traditional attributes of the grimy occupation had found a congenial home. There is something very pleasant in reading of the home-like scenes in 'Evangeline,' where, in the far-off Acadie, the children of the village, hurrying away to Basil's forge,
'Stood with wondering eyes to behold him
Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything.
Nailing the shoe in its place; while near him the tire of the cartwheel
Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders.
Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness
Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and crevice.
Warm by the forge within they watched the labouring bellows,
And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes,
Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.'
There appears to be every reason to believe that the mysteries of Druidism, and those secret metallurgical rites anciently practised in the East, and known as the 'Samothracian Mysteries,' were very closely allied. From a comparison of the texts of Strabo, Diodorus of Sicily, Herodotus, Clement of Alexandria, and others, who speak of the Dactyli, Cabiri, Curetes, Corybantes, and Telchines, as people who came from the far East to Phrygia and Crete, where they introduced the working of bronze
