somewhat of the Divinity.  Medicine was always joined with magic:  no remedy was administered without mysterious ceremony and incantation.  The use of plants and herbs, both in medicinal and magical practices, was early and general.  The mistletoe, pointed out by its very peculiar appearance and manner of growth, must have struck powerfully on the imaginations of a superstitious people.  Its virtues may have been soon discovered.  It has been fully proved, against the opinion of Celsus, that internal remedies were of very early use.[9] Yet if it had not, the practice of the present savage nations supports the probability of that opinion.  By some modern authors the mistletoe is said to be of signal service in the cure of certain convulsive distempers, which, by their suddenness, their violence, and their unaccountable symptoms, have been ever considered as supernatural.  The epilepsy was by the Romans for that reason called morbus sacer; and all other nations have regarded it in the same light.  The Druids also looked upon vervain, and some other plants, as holy, and probably for a similar reason.

The other objects of the Druid worship were chiefly serpents, in the animal world, and rude heaps of stone, or great pillars without polish or sculpture, in the inanimate.  The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror,—­by his annual renewals, to raise admiration,—­by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to serve for a variety of symbols,—­and by all, to be an object of religious observance:  accordingly, no object of idolatry has been more universal.[10] And this is so natural, that serpent-veneration seems to be rising again, even in the bosom of Mahometanism.[11]

The great stones, it has been supposed, were originally monuments of illustrious men, or the memorials of considerable actions,—­or they were landmarks for deciding the bounds of fixed property.  In time the memory of the persons or facts which these stones were erected to perpetuate wore away; but the reverence which custom, and probably certain periodical ceremonies, had preserved for those places was not so soon obliterated.  The monuments themselves then came to be venerated,—­and not the less because the reason for venerating them was no longer known.  The landmark was in those times held sacred on account of its great uses, and easily passed into an object of worship.  Hence the god Terminus amongst the Romans.  This religious observance towards rude stones is one of the most ancient and universal of all customs.  Traces of it are to be found in almost all, and especially in these Northern nations; and to this day, in Lapland, where heathenism is not yet entirely extirpated, their chief divinity, which they call Storjunkare, is nothing more than a rude stone.[12]