sopher, that popular religions are really, in
the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of
demonism. 'Primus in orbe deos fecit timor,' or, in the
fuller expression of a modern, 'Fear made the devils, and
weak Hope the gods.'

With the tribes who, in the time of Caesar or Tacitus, inhabited
the forests of Germany, and, perhaps, amongst the Scandinavians,
some more elevated ideas obtained, the germ, however, of a
degenerated popular prejudice. By all the German tribes, on
the testimony of cotemporary writers, women were held in
high respect, and were believed to have something even divine
in their mental or spiritual faculties. 'Very many of their
women they regard in the light of prophetesses, and when
superstitious fear is in the ascendant, even of goddesses.'
History has preserved the names of some of these Teutonic
_deities_. Veleda, by prophetic inspiration, or by superior genius,
directed the councils of her nation, and for some years
successfully resisted the progress of the imperial arms.[30]
Momentous questions of state or religion were submitted to their
_divine_ judgment, and it is not wonderful if, endowed with
supernatural attributes, they, like other prophets, helped to
fulfil their own predictions. The Britons and Gauls, of the Keltic
race, seem to have resembled the Orientals, rather than the Teutons
or Italians, in their religious systems. Long before the Romans came
in contact with them the magic science is said to have been
developed, and the priests, like those of India or Egypt,
communicated the mysteries only to a privileged few, with
circumstances of profound secrecy. Such was the excellence of the
magic science of the British Druids, that Pliny (_Hist. Nat._
xxx.) was induced to suppose that the Magi of Persia must have
derived their system from Britain. For the most part the Kelts
then, as in the present day, were peculiarly tenacious of a creed
which it was the interest of a priestly caste to preserve. On the
other hand, the looser religion of the Teuton nations, of the
Scandinavians and Germans, could not find much difficulty in
accepting the particular conceptions of the Southern conquerors;
and the sorceric mythology of the Northern barbarians readily
recognised the power of an Erichtho to control the operations of
nature, to prevent or confound the course of the elements,
interrupt the influence of the sun, avert or induce tempests, to
affect the passions of the sou