The accounts we have of the Druidical orations and discourses afford some notion of their admitted eloquence, which was of a lofty, impassioned, and mysterious character. Their counsel was equally solicited and regarded; and those orators who succeeded the Druids in the Western Islands seem to have possessed no less power, since, if one of them asked anything even of the greatest inhabitant, as his dress, horse, or arms, it was immediately given up to him--sometimes from respect, and sometimes from fear of being satirized, which was considered a great dishonour. The British chieftains, also, appear to have been gifted with considerable oratorical powers when they addressed their soldiers before a battle; as Tacitus translates the British names of such by "incentives to war."
The Druids were the only physicians and surgeons to the Britons; in which professions they blended some knowledge of natural medicines, with the general superstitions by which they were characterised. The practice of the healing art has ever commanded the esteem of the rudest nations; hence it was the obvious policy of the priests or Druids to study the properties of plants. Their famous Mistletoe, or _All-heal_, we have seen, was a cure in many diseases, an antidote to poisons, and a sure remedy against infection. We have in the present day a popular remedy for cuts and other wounds, sold under the name of _Heal-all_. Another plant, called Samulus, or Marsh-wort, which grew chiefly in damp places, was believed to be of excellent effect in preserving the health of swine or oxen, when it had been bruised and put into their water-troughs. But it was required to be gathered fasting and with the left hand, without looking back when it was being plucked. A kind of hedge hyssop, called _Selago_, was esteemed to be a general charm and preservative from sudden accidents and misfortunes; and it was to be gathered with nearly the same ceremony as the mistletoe. To these may be added Vervain, the herb _Britannica_, which was either the great Water-dock, or scurvy-grass; besides several other plants, the virtues of which, however, were greatly augmented by the rites in plucking them; superstitions not entirely out of use, while the old herbals were regarded as books of medicine. We gather from Pliny's _Natural History_ some hints on the preparation of these materials, showing that sometimes the juices were extracted by bruising and steeping them in cold water, and sometimes by boiling them; that they were occasionally infused in a liquor which he calls wine; that they were administered in fumigations; and that the dried leaves, stalks, and roots of plants, were also used to impart a virtue to various liquids. The almost solitary shop of the herbalist in our great market in Covent Garden, will thus carry the mind's eye back through many centuries.