still burning out the old year and
welcoming in the new by fires lighted on the top of hills, and other
high places. The next season was the month of May, when the fruits of
the earth began, in the Eastern countries, to be gathered, and the first
fruits of them consecrated to Baal, or to the _Sun_, whose benign
influence had ripened them; and one is almost persuaded that the dance
round the May pole, in that month, is a faint image of the rites
observed on such occasions. The next great festival was on the 21st of
June, when the sun, being in Cancer, first appears to go backwards and
leave us. On this occasion the Baalim used to call the people together,
and to light fires on high places, and to cause their sons, and their
daughters, and their cattle to pass through the fire, calling upon Baal
to bless them, and not forsake them.

[28] In Devonshire and Cornwall it is still considered ominous if a hare
crosses a person on the road.

[29] See _Carew's Survey of Cornwall_, p. 22. Mr. Carew had a stone-ring
of this kind in his possession, and the person who gave it to him
avowed, that "he himself saw a part of the stick sticking in it,"--but
"_Penes authorem sit fides_," says Mr. Carew.

[30] The same superstition still exists in Devonshire.

[31] See account of Druidism in Polewhele's Historical Views of
Devonshire, vol. 1.

CHAPTER VI.

AESCULAPIAN MYSTERIES, &C.

Apollo is said to have been one of the most gentle, and at the same
time, as may be inferred from his numerous issue, one of the most
gallant of the heathen deities. The first and most noted of his sons was
Aesculapius, whom he had by the nymph Coronis. Some say that Apollo, on
account of her infidelity, shot his mother when big with child with him;
but repenting the fact, saved the infant, and gave him to Chiron to be
instructed in physic.[32] Others report, that as King Phlegyas, her
father was carrying her with him into Peloponnesus, her pains surprised
her on the confines of Epidauria where, to conceal her shame, she
exposed the infant on a mountain. The _truth_, however is, that this
Aesculapius was a poor infant cast away, a dropt child, laid in a wood
near Epidaurus, by his unnatural parents, who were afterwards ashamed to
own him; he was shortly afterwards found by some huntsmen, who, seeing a
lighted flame or glory surrounding his head, looked upon it as a
prognostic of the child's future glory. The infant was delivered by them
to a nu