"Dickens, Charles - Child's History of England, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

animals. The art I mean, is the construction and management of
war-chariots or cars, for which they have ever been celebrated in
history. Each of the best sort of these chariots, not quite breast
high in front, and open at the back, contained one man to drive,
and two or three others to fight - all standing up. The horses who
drew them were so well trained, that they would tear, at full
gallop, over the most stony ways, and even through the woods;
dashing down their masters' enemies beneath their hoofs, and
cutting them to pieces with the blades of swords, or scythes, which
were fastened to the wheels, and stretched out beyond the car on
each side, for that cruel purpose. In a moment, while at full
speed, the horses would stop, at the driver's command. The men
within would leap out, deal blows about them with their swords like
hail, leap on the horses, on the pole, spring back into the
chariots anyhow; and, as soon as they were safe, the horses tore
away again.

The Britons had a strange and terrible religion, called the
Religion of the Druids. It seems to have been brought over, in
very early times indeed, from the opposite country of France,
anciently called Gaul, and to have mixed up the worship of the
Serpent, and of the Sun and Moon, with the worship of some of the
Heathen Gods and Goddesses. Most of its ceremonies were kept
secret by the priests, the Druids, who pretended to be enchanters,
and who carried magicians' wands, and wore, each of them, about his
neck, what he told the ignorant people was a Serpent's egg in a
golden case. But it is certain that the Druidical ceremonies
included the sacrifice of human victims, the torture of some
suspected criminals, and, on particular occasions, even the burning
alive, in immense wicker cages, of a number of men and animals
together. The Druid Priests had some kind of veneration for the
Oak, and for the mistletoe - the same plant that we hang up in
houses at Christmas Time now - when its white berries grew upon the
Oak. They met together in dark woods, which they called Sacred
Groves; and there they instructed, in their mysterious arts, young
men who came to them as pupils, and who sometimes stayed with them
as long as twenty years.

These Druids built great Temples and altars, open to the sky,
fragments of some of which are yet remaining. Stonehenge, on
Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire, is the most extraordinary of these.
Three curious stones, called Kits Coty House, on Bluebell Hill,
near Maidstone, in Kent, form another. We know, from examination
of the great blocks of which such buildings are made, that they
could not have been raised without the aid of some ingenious
machines, which are common now, but which the ancient Britons
certainly did not use in making their own uncomfortable houses. I
should not wonder if the Druids, and their pupils who stayed with
them twenty years, knowing more than the rest of the Britons, kept
the people out of sight while they made these buildings, and then