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find Mercury, Mars and Pluto, their own Deities and their own doctrines, among a people who frequently had never heard them mentioned.
But even if there were no cause to distrust the contemptuous and hasty relations, which the ancients have left us of their barbarous neighbours; and even if the little they have told us were exact, do their writings after all contain wherewith to interest us on the subject of the Celtic ‘or Gothic’ doctrines? Can a few words describing the exterior worship of a religion teach us its spirit? Will they discover the chain, often concealed, which unites and connects all its different tenets, precepts and forms? Can they convey to us an idea of the sentiments which such a religion implanted in the soul, or of the powerful ascendancy which it gained over the minds of its votaries. We can assuredly learn nothing of all this in Cæsar, Strabo or Tacitus, and how then can they interest or engage such readers, as only esteem in learning and erudition, what enlightens the mind with real knowledge?
It is only from the mouths of its own professors that we can acquire a just knowledge of any Religion. All other interpreters are here unfaithful; sometimes condemning and aspersing what they explain;
