CYRUS. 39

they looked forward to his coming again, more power- ful and glorious than ever. These Massagetse, says our author, resembled the Scythians, but could fight on foot as well as on horseback, their favourite weapon being, as with the Anglo - Saxons, a battle - axe or bill. They had the peculiar custom of sacrificing their old people, and then feasting on them, and natural death was con- sidered a misfortune. This curious people, whose descendants may be now in northern or western Eu- rope, knew nothing of tillage, and lived on flesh, fish, and milk. Their only deity, known to Herodotus, was * the Sun. To him they sacrificed the horse, with the notion that it was right to bestow the swiftest of creatures on the swiftest of gods. The Persians also attached a certain sanctity to some breeds of horses, and the Teutonic conquerors of Britain bore a horse as their cognisance. Some say that Hengist and Horsa were not names of men, but only represented a people using this national symbol. This rude heraldry of our northern ancestors or conquerors may still be traced in the " "White Horse " cut out on the chalk- hills in more than one place on our Berkshire and Wiltshire downs.