picit arctos
Felices errore suo, quos ille timorum
Maxumus, haud urget Lethi metus: inde ruendi
In ferrum mens prona viris, animae capaces
Mortis, et ignavum rediturae parcere vitae.

_Lucan. Phars. L. i._

Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies
Who that worst fear--the fear of death--despise--
Hence they no cares for this frail being feel,
But rush undaunted on the pointed steel;
Provoke approaching fate, and bravely scorn
To spare that life which must so soon return.

The Druids were wont to teach in small cells, but lived in large
buildings and fared sumptuously. Some of the cells are remaining to
this day, as at Ty Iltud, in Brecknockshire.

From these observations it is apparent that a portion of men
extraordinary in their vast power over the human mind, and possessed
of superior knowledge, were here before Caesar's arrival, and that our
ancestors were not such barbarians as the proud Roman would lead us to
consider them.[11]

[11] See also "the Druids and their Times," from the German of
Wieland, p. 20 of the present volume.

SELIM.

* * * * *

CURIOUS CUSTOM RELATING TO INHERITANCE.

Salmon, in his _History of Hertfordshire_, imagines that the East
Saxon and Mercian kingdoms were, in the upper part of this county,
separated from each other by the Ermin-street; and in the lower part,
in the parish of Cheshunt, by a bank, which anciently reached from
Middlesex through Theobald's Park, across Goffe's Lane, to
Thunderfield Grove, over Beaumont Green, to Nineacres Wood. There is a
custom in the manor of Cheshunt, he says, "by which the elder brother
inherits above the bank, and the youngest below it, in the same
fields;--which could not have been introduced but from the different
laws of a different government."

P.T.W.

* * * * *

ANECDOTE GALLERY.

* * * * *

ANECDOTES OF THE BAR.

(_By a retired Barrister._)

Mr. Justice Lawrence possessed the advantage of a very handsome
person, accompanied with a great share of dignity of manner. His
deportment was haughty; but it was one of pride unmarked with
insolence. He knew what was due to the station which he filled, and he
exacted the respect to which it was entitled. He crushed assumption
and forward impudence by a look, and brought them down to the level of
their own insignificance. I recollect an ins