... With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phœnicians call’d
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs,
In Sion also not unsung,...
It is deeply and painfully interesting to dig up in our British soil decided traces of this gross idolatry.[[129]]
HEXHAM CRYPT.
HEXHAM is generally admitted by antiquaries to have been a Roman town, though the proof of it is not absolutely decisive. St. Wilfrid built a church and monastery here about the year 673, after the Roman manner, which was considered the wonder of the age. We are told by the historians of that period that ‘secret cells and subterranean oratories were laid with wondrous industry beneath’ the building. Some vaults
