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ligious circle. Whoever minutely examines the Druidical circles, will find this distinction well founded. The sun (Beal, or Bealan) was the principal Celtic deity, and the east, or sun rising, the most honourable point. The religious circle occupied this honourable position, and the judicial one stood commonly due west of it. The former was generally larger and more magnificent than the latter."Though the judicial circle differed nothing in the exterior from the temple," he says, " in the interior, it differed widely." Perhaps, from the similarity of the monuments, in the present instance, to each other, one might be led to conclude, that the purpose intended for both was the

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The Druids seem to have paid much attention to the numbers of erect stones which they placed in their circles," and it is supposed," says Huddleston, "from the circles consisting of seven, twelve, or nineteen erect stones, that they had their respective astronomical references to the number

sent case,

of days in the week, the signs in the zodiac, or the cycle of the moon." The number in the circles above described, as already observed, correspond to the number of points in the compass. As to the position of the stones with regard to each other, Toland says, p. 135, "that in some temples they stand close together," as in the pre"but in most separate and equidistant." Of the excavated stones he observes, page 150, that " of them have a cavity capable of holding a pint, and sometimes more, with a channel or groove about an inch deep, reaching from the hollow place to the ground;" and Huddleston mentions, page 323, "that this cavity on the top of one of the stones in the Druidical temples, has often been noticed. It was intended to catch the dew or rain pure from heaven. The Druids had their holy water and holy

many

was

fire as well as the Jews and other nations."-" Whether this cavity," he adds in the following page, 66 used by the Druids to catch the reflection of the heavenly bodies, I shall not pretend to determine. But from

the perforation reaching from the cavity to the bottom of the pillar, whereby the water could be drawn off at pleasure, it is evident its principal end was to supply them with holy water pure from heaven." From the ashes found under the figured stone No. 2. it is natural to infer that sacrifices were here made. That the Druids were accustomed to offer human sa

crifices, Pliny, Tacitus, and Cæsar, abundantly confirm.

In the prefixed drawing, fig. 1. the stones composing the circle are represented as they appear on their inner surface. This method was adopted for the purpose of exhibiting their relative height and the outline of their summit. Figs. 2. and 3. are magnified drawings of the carved stones beside the central pillar. Fig. 4. is a drawing of one of the excavated stones

found at a short distance from this edifice; and fig. 5. is a representation of the only remaining carved stone discovered last year in the monument to the westward. With every wish for the success of your valuable Magazine, I am your most obedient servant, ALEX. LAWSON.

Manse of Creich, Nov. 11, 1817.

ble correspondent in this and the preceding *The fact mentioned by our respectafound beneath one of the stones of this cirpage, of burned human bones having been cle, certainly tends to corroborate his opinion, that it had formerly been a Druidical Temple. At the same time, we apprehend the origin and use of what are commonly called Druidical circles, is still a matter involved in great obscurity, notwithstanding all that Toland, Huddleston, and Chalmers, have done to illustrate the subject. Circles of stones, similar to those here mentioned, have been found in many countries where neither Druids nor Celts are suspected to have ever penetrated, and where systems of religion and national customs entirely different are known to have prevailed. Even in our own country, a remarkable evidence of this still exists. One of the stones of a great " Druid Circle" in Orkney, has a large iron ring fixed into it, which is called by the common people the Ring of Odin. In former times, according to the tradition of the natives, all important treaties and engagements were hands through this ring; and even at the ratified among their ancestors, by joining present day, lovers still continue to plight their troth, and the peasantry to pledge their bargains, by the same extraordinary sanction.-Edit.

ON THE LAYING OUT OF PLEASURE

GROUNDS IN SCOTLAND.

MR EDITOR,

ALLOW me to suggest as a fit subject for occasional papers in your Magazine, the history of the art of laying out grounds in Scotland connected or not, according to the information of the party, with the history of architecture. I do not know any subject equally interesting to country gentlemen, of which so little is known. We have in various works (among which ranks first that of H. Walpole) the history of gardening in England-and in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, that of Ireland; but of those who planted the principal avenues and clumps in Scotland, the public know nothing.

Chattelherault at Hamilton, it is said, was laid out from a design by the famous Le Notre, and the Earl of Eglinton's park near Irvine, by the celebrated Brown. Sir William Chambers built Duddingston-house, and the grounds at Hatton, it is supposed, were laid out by London and Wise in 1715. Switzer, Batty, Langley, and Laurence, state in their works, that they were employed in Scotland. Can any of your readers refer to places laid out by them? It is probable also, that Bridgeman, Plaw, James, Miller, and other artists, went occasionally to that quarter; and doubtless, many of your readers may recollect of hearing these and other names mentioned by their fathers in their younger years, as having given plans at such and such places. Who did the proprietor of Culzean Castle employ, after his singularly picturesque villa was finished by the late Mr Adams? Who planted the avenue of lime trees at Taymouth? or the masses at Inverary? The Earl of Stair's place near Maybole, Mr Hogg's of Newliston, Dalkeith-house, Saltonhall, Woodhouselee, North-Berwick-house, and numerous other old places, which I cannot at this moment recollect, are worthy of historical inquiry. And when and where did the modern system of laying out grounds first make its appearance in Scotland? Is it certain that Brown was ever in that country, or any of his immediate pupils? But I need not add more; for I trust some patriotic individual of local knowledge and extensive acquaintance, and,

if possible, a sexagenarian, will take up the subject, and pursue it from the earliest records to the present time. In doing so, he will perform a pleasing service to a number of your readers, and to none more than to, Sir, yours, &c. L.

London, Oct. 20, 1817.

REMARKS ON GREEK AND FRENCH TRAGEDY.-COMPARISON OF THE HIPPOLYTUS OF EURIPIDES WITH THE PHEDRE OF RACINE.

Ir may be safely asserted, that there exists little original genius in the mind in which there is a proneness to imitation. This divine energy sees all Nature with its own eyes, and clothes all objects in its own colours, and gives utterance to all its imaginations in the music of its own voice. All poets, since the world began, have laboured in the same great storehouse, and on the same elements; yet no two of them worthy of the name have ever produced the same results. They look alike on the rivers, and the lakes, and the oceans, and the forests, and the vallies, and the mountains: but the pictures which they have drawn of them are various as the lights and shades that fall upon them, and give them every moment a new character. They have all listened to the billows, and the cataracts, and the winds, and the thunders: but these have spoken to each a peculiar language. They have all gazed on the sun, and the moon, and the stars: but these have shed on each a brighter or a darker ray, modified by the acuteness of his own intellectual organs. They have all cast their vision inward on the world of spirit: but the views they have given of it are diversified as the play of the passions and the wanderings of thought. It is, indeed, as unlikely that any man who has not read Nature in books, should coincide with the ideas and expressions of another, as that, at any two moments of time while the wind blows, the heavens should exhibit the same forms, and arrangements, and tints of the clouds. If men would be contented to paint Nature as they themselves see it, and to express their own feelings in the simplest way, they might write with various degrees of excellence; but their compositions would bear the stamp of individuality as certainly as

the features of their face, and we should not be doomed to travel through a hundred volumes of the same dull monot ny of common-place.

Imagination, which, more than all the other powers of the mind, is the heritage that Nature has conferred on the poet, is a faculty wholly creative, and in proportion to its activity and comprehension, he must take his place among the worthies of the past ages. It cannot be controlled to trace the beaten path, but loves to deviate into the wildernesses of Nature, unexplored even in thought by other men, and with an originality of range, to collect its materials from the unfrequented spaces of earth, and sea, and sky. It delights in its own inventions, noting, even in the simplest floweret of the spring, beauties and properties unseen by others, and so lights the visible universe by the effulgence of its own eye, that it may be said to walk in glory and in majesty in the radiance of suns, and moons, and stars, of its own creation.

I have been led into this train of reflection by the effect which the imitation of the ancients has had on modern literature, as also that which has been produced among themselves. The literature of Rome is inferior to that of Greece, only, perhaps, because it was borrowed. Virgil has drawn the plan of the Eneid, and many individual passages, from Homer, and falls infinitely beneath him in all the qualities of the epic. His characters, with the single exception of Dido, compared to the portraits which, on the glorious canvas of Homer, start into life in all the colouring, and costume, and beauty, and truth of Nature, are stiff, and formal, and lifeless as the figures on a Chinese screen, and, instead of the incidents of the Greek bard, which are great, and diversified, and interesting as those that occur in the wide range of society, his narrative is cold, and slow, and delightless. Many of the flowers which he transplanted from Homer, and which were by him raised from celestial seeds, and watered by celestial dews, have refused to take root, and withered and languished in the foreign soil. The reason is, that Homer wrote an epic poem from the fulness, and vastness, and propelling energies of his own soul, which had been in his infancy fired by the mar

vellous legends of the Trojan war: Virgil wrote only because Homer had written before him. If critical justice, then, compel us to pronounce that poem a failure, on which such a genius as Virgil bestowed so much time, and which he laboured with so much care, what is to be the fortune of the works of the servile multitude of imitators? We must remember, besides, that the Greeks and Romans were kindred nations; their languages, and laws, and manners, and government, and religion, were similar; and, if it were possible that imitation in poetry could ever succeed, among them every thing was favourable to it; yet it has impressed a secondary character on almost the whole literature of Rome. We might have expected, that, with this warning before their eyes, the moderns would have considered success in the same path hopeless; for, between them and the ancients, the wall of partition is altogether impassable.

If there were no other obstacle, the mythology of the Greeks and Romans were alone sufficient to preclude the possibility of a successful imitation of their writings on the part of the moderns. That singular system which is most favourable to poetry, and is indeed itself little else than the poetry of the heavens and the earth, is inwoven with the whole of the poetry of the ancients, but is altogether inadmissible into that of the moderns. The fountains and the forests, and the skies and the oceans, were peopled with divinities, who had a firm hold of the belief, and a strong influence on the actions of mankind. The mariner and the hunter, and the warrior and the poet, knelt each at the shrine of his respective deity, from whom he expected protection, or success, or inspiration. The introduction of these beings gives rise to many of the most beautiful visions of the poetry of the ancients, but nothing can be so frigid or lifeless as the Apollos and Dianas of modern poetry.

For literature to thrive in a country, or to attain to any degree of strength and vigour, it must be indigenous in the soil, and, like the oak or the cedar that flourishes on its mountains, and the rose or the flowering shrub that blooms in its vallies, it must shoot into sublimity and luxuriate in beauty, watered by its na

tive dews, and cherished by its native suns; but imitation has to a certain extent mildewed the finest productions of the moderns. Even our own literature, unquestionably the most original in Europe, has suffered from the blight; and there is reason to believe, that Paradise Lost would have been a better poem if Milton had never read Homer. If Britain had been left to the untutored efforts of her own mighty genius, she would have been without a rival in the literature of the world; but in many cases she can claim only a second place, because she has stooped to imitation. It is worthy of notice, that some of our noblest poets are men who had not been taught in our schools to sing a bad imitation of the song of the ancients, but by their native notes have risen from the cottage into glory and preeminence, as the lark springs from her lowly seat to delight the heavens and the earth by her melody. This subject might furnish matter for many essays, and may perhaps be reverted to on some future occasion; at present it is my object to apply these cursory hints to the French Tragedy, and chiefly the celebrated Phedre of Racine, a play borrowed from the Hippolytus of Euripides, which I am now to analyze.

Phædra, the wife of Theseus, king of Athens, conceived for Hippolytus, his son by a former marriage, a passion which she had struggled in vain to conquer; and long pined under its effects. The decline of her health and the dejection of her mind did not escape the observation of an old and confidential servant, to whom, after much solicitation, she revealed the cause of her distress. This woman imprudently, and contrary to the commands of her mistress, disclosed the secret to Hippolytus, who was struck with horror at the very idea. He was a young man of a lofty mind and a spotless virtue, who spent much of his time in the forests in the exercises of hunting, as the best preparation for the toils and dangers of war; a devout worshipper of Diana, and averse to Venus, who, to be avenged on him for the neglect of her altars, inspired his stepmother with this unnatural passion. Her mind was so deeply wounded by the disclosure, that she put an end to her life, and left a writing, in which she accused Hippolytus of an

attempt to dishonour his father's bed. Theseus, who had been absent during these transactions, returned immediately after the death of Phædra, and found the fatal paper, by which he was so enraged, that he prayed to Neptune, who had promised to grant him any request that he should ask, that he would destroy his unnatural son, and immediately ordered him into banishment. When Phædra's servant disclosed to Hippolytus the passion of her mistress, she bound him by an oath never to reveal the secret, and he heard the reproaches of his father without even insinuating the guilt of the queen. He set out with the design of quitting his native country, and on the way a monster arose out of the ocean, and so terrified the horses, that they dashed the chariot in pieces, and he was brought upon the stage terribly mangled by the fall. Diana appeared and removed all suspicion of guilt from the character of her votary, who pardoned his father and died.

Venus, in the first scene, delivers a prologue, in which she explains the subject of the play, and her determination to punish Hippolytus for his contempt of her altars. She is succeeded by Hippolytus bearing a garland to hang on the shrine of Diana.

H. Queen of the forest, graciously re

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What shall I do, what shall I leave undone?

Dear lady, look upon the sun's bright rays, The narrow chamber now confines thee not,

And thou mayst freely breathe the cooling air:

Now didst thou only talk of coming hither, Now thou art here, and soon wilt seek the palace.

Thou still desirest change, and nought delights thee;

And still thou fliest from that which thou possessest.

But thy disease is seated in the mind, And neither time nor circumstance can aid thee.

Calamity makes up the sum of life, And men must know no pause from pain and sorrow;

And yet there is a place of refuge for him, A region of repose and happiness,

A home out-shining far the land we know, But it is hid in darkness and in clouds; And thus we cling to life and all the woes Which are our portion here, because we know them;

But from that peaceful and that happy land

We are deterred by fables.

P. Support me gently, raise my weary head,

My joints are loosened, and I faint with pain;

Remove the fillet bound around my locks, And let them loosely flow upon my

shoulders.

Oh! might I quench my burning thirst

with waters

That drop as pure as dew from the fresh fountains,

And rest me under the delightful shade
Of a tall poplar, in the leafy grove.

N. Lady, why speakest thou thus? thy words are wild.

P. Oh! send me to the mountains, to the woods,

-The groves of pine,-where the staunch hounds pursue

The dapple hinds; yes! by the gods, I love

To cheer the chasing dogs with loud halloo,

And launch, with steady aim, the hunter's

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An oracle to tell what god distracts thee, And leads thy mind astray from reason's path.

P. Unhappy that I am, what have I done?

From wisdom's ways, ah! whither have I wandered?

Have I deserved the vengeance of the gods, That I should fall so low? has reason lost My mind's dominion? is there happiness Again on earth for such a wretch as me? Oh! veil my head,-hide me from every eye,

I blush for the wild words that I have spoken;

"My tears will flow,-my face is turned to shame."

After some conversation between the Chorus and the Nurse, in which they bewail the state of Phædra, and hazard conjectures as to its cause, she again enters. The nurse implores her by all the tenderness and confidence with which she had ever treated her, to reveal the true cause of her sorrow. She with difficulty prevails, and the queen alludes to her passion for Hippolytus in such a way as that the whole truth flashes on her mind. The dialogue continues, but the language of Phædra is more sententious and less passionate than we might expect in such a situation. She is, indeed, still supporting the conflict with her own mind, and when she does become more animated, her feelings are all on the side of virtue.

P. I hate the fair outside and hollow
heart

Of those who worship virtue in their words,
And yet in secret act dishonourably;
Who to their husbands seem all purity,
But veiled by night's black mantle dare
such deeds,

As might give voices to the very walls
To speak aloud and tell of mysteries;
Oh! sooner may I die, than bring disgrace
Upon my husband and my happy children.
Yes! they shall flourish free from infamy,
Nor be dishonoured by a mother's shame.

The knowledge of a guilty parent's crimes Binds up the tongue, and blunts the edge of virtue.

The nurse endeavours to persuade her that there was nothing uncommon,

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