men. The south-east parts, however, of Britain, had already, before the age of Caesar, made the first, and most requisite step towards a civil government, and the Britons, by tillage and agriculture, had there increased to a great multitude (Caesar, lib. iv). The other inhabitants of the island still maintained themselves by pasture; they were clothed with skins of beasts; they dwelt in huts, which they reared in the forests and marshes with which the country was covered they shifted easily their habitation, when actuated either by the hopes of plunder or fear of an enemy; the convenience of feeding their cattle was even a sufficient motive for removing their seats; as they were ignorant of all the refinements of life, their wants and their possessions were equally scanty and limited. They were divided into small nations or tribes, and being a military people, whose sole property was their arms and their cattle, it was impossible, after they had acquired a relish of liberty, for their princes and chieftains to establish any despotic authority over them - hunting and fishing for their food, tilling the ground and fighting their enemies seemed their principal occupations. Their religion was governed by the Druids, who were their priests, and possessed great power over them. Directing their religious duties and presiding over the education of youth, a primitive kind of civil and criminal jurisdiction was exercised. No species of superstition was ever more terrible than that of the Druids. They practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses, and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing them to writing. Human sacrifices were practised among them; the spoils of war were devoted to their divinities. No idolatrous worship ever attained such an ascendant over mankind as that of the ancient Gauls and Britons and the Romans after their conquest, finding it impossible to reconcile those nations to the law and institutions of their masters, while it maintained its authority, were at last obliged to abolish it by penal statutes; a violence which had never before been practised by those tolerating conquerors."
Such were the aborigines described by Hume who inhabited Britain at the time of the Roman invasion. Numerous relics of the earlier or prehistoric age have been brought to light by one of our townsmen, Mr. W. J. Lewis Abbott, F.G.S., who has collected specimens of their implements, tools, rude pottery, domestic articles, bones, shells, ornaments, weapons, etc., forming a wonderful collection representative of the habits of these early settlers found on the dust heaps or the kitchen-middens of Hastings, and the rocks and fissures of the district. Mr. Lewis Abbott has written and lectured much upon this interesting and unique subject, and few will forget his marvellous exhibit in the local Museum some years ago and his wonderful accounts of the old hunter-fishermen whose -
