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 cov- ered more than half the county of Warwickshire in Bri- tain, and the sites of which still retain the appellation of Arden, to the much smaller one of the ancient Man- cenion, that covered and surrounded the site of the present Manchester. Written Arduen by Caesar and Tacitus in speaking of the forest in Gaul, and Arduen by Ossian in mentioning the woods of Caledonia, it Ardenburg cannot (says Mr Whitaker) be compounded of ar the prepositive article in Celtic, and the substantive den, as Ardrah. Baxter and Cambden assert it to be; but is formed of ard an adjective, and ven the same as den. The mean- ing of the name therefore is not, as Mr Baxter renders it, simply the hills, or even, as the ingenious translator of Ossian interprets it, the high hill. Ard signifies ei- ther high or great, and ven or den either an hill or wood. Arduen, Ardevon, or Arden, then, means a con- siderable wood. Hence, only, the name became ap- plicable to such very different sites, as the plains of Warwickshire and the hills of Scotland; and it was gi- ven, not only to the most extensive forests, to that which was the greatest in Gaul, or so considerable in Britain; but to many that were important only within their own contracted districts, as the wood of Man- cenion abovementioned, and others.