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marvellous with which our ancestors filled their Romances, a system of wonders unknown to the ancient Classics, and but little investigated even to this day; wherein we see Dwarfs and Giants, Fairies and Demons acting and directing all the machinery with the most regular conformity to certain characters which they always sustain.
What reason then can be assigned, why the study of ‘these ancient Celtic and Gothic Religions’ hath been so much neglected? One may, I fancy, be immediately found in the idea conceived of the Celts ‘and Goths’ in general, and especially of the Germans and Scandinavians. They are indiscriminately mentioned under the title of Barbarians, and this word, once spoken, is believed to include the whole that can be said on the subject. There cannot be a more commodious method of dispensing with a study, which is not only considered as not very agreeable, but also as affording but little satisfaction. Were this term to be admitted in its strictest sense, it should not even then excuse our intire disregard of a people, whose exploits and institutions make so considerable a figure in our history. But ought they, after all, to be represented as a troop of savages, barely of a human form, ravaging and destroying by mere brutal instinct, and totally devoid of all notions of
