the common name of forests among the Celts, from the wildly extensive one which ranged for 500 miles in length across the country of Gaul, or covered more than half the county of Warwick in Britain, and the sites of which still retain the appellation of Arden, to the much smaller one of the ancient Manconium, that covered and surrounded the site of the present Manchester. Written Arduen by Cesar and Tacitus in speaking of the forest in Gaul, and Arden by Ollian in mentioning the woods of Caledonia, it cannot be compounded of ar the prepositional article in Celtic, and the substantive den, as Baxter and Camden assert it to be; but is formed of ard an adjective, and ven the same as den. The meaning of the name therefore is not, as Mr Baxter renders it, simply the hills, or even, as the ingenious translator of Ollian interprets it, the high hill. Ard signifies either high or great, and ven or den either an hill or wood. Arduen, Arden.