and magnificent Sardis, this sepulchre is the sole relic of a once mighty people, whose empire has long since passed away, and whose name is nearly forgotten! The DRUIDS, according to Cæsar, prohibited the use of written characters, and prefered the exercise of the memory; so that we have little information as to their manners and opinions. Fortunately, however, they have left us, in their simple barrows and sacred circles, materials from which something may be deduced. The connection between the Celtic tribes of Western Europe and the Scandinavians and the Scythians of the north, is supposed to be conclusively shown by their barrows. The latter were the great barrow-architects of antiquity. The description by Herodotus of the mode in which they buried one of the kings was confirmed in a remarkable manner by the contents of some barrows in Siberia opened by the Russian government a few years ago. Herodotus mentions coolly amongst the articles placed in the chamber, "one of the king's wives strangled;" and even this statement seemed to be proved by what was found in Siberia. In one which was opened, both the male and female body rested on a sheet of pure gold, and were covered with the same material. The gold weighed as much as 40 lbs. In the barrows opened in England such costly coverings are not found; but considerable insight into the habits and manners of our British and Saxon progenitors, and the state of their arts and manufactures, has been obtained from examination of their contents. In America there are large numbers of these tumuli: it is stated that there are nearly 3,000 of them, from 20 to 100 feet high, between the mouth of the Ohio, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Rio San-Francisco. Some of these monuments are two or three stories in height, and resemble in their form the Mexican teocallis and the pyramids with steps of Egypt and Western Asia. Some are constructed of stones heaped together. In England we have an enormous example of an earthen memorial, called Silbury-hill, in Wiltshire, close to what used to be the Bath road, and which is probably connected in some way with the temples at Avebury and Stonehenge. It has been ascribed by some to the third century of our æra, and other writers consider it of much earlier date. This singular work covers a very large area, its circumference being 1,550 feet, and its perpendicular height, to the flat surface which forms its summit, is not less than 120 feet. In 1849, excavations were made in it, under the direction of the late Dean Merewether (of Hereford) and a party of archæologists, but nothing was found. It would seem to correspond in purpose › with the temple-mounds of Mexico. The pyramids of this last-named country, and the still earlier pyramids of Egypt, of which I shall speak presently, are but elaborations of the same type,-the simple mound of earth. The practice of setting up pillars in commemoration of certain events, as described in the Bible, was an universal custom, both in savage and civilized states, and has been continued to the present day. I annex a sketch of an example in Yorkshire, which has been often quoted, the pillar at Rudstone: this is about 24 feet high out of the ground. There are numerous examples remaining both in England and Ireland. This description of memorial was much used by the Egyptians, and was brought by them to great perfection. We shall see, when treating of that marvellous people,-those giants in architecture,that they raised obelisks of enormous size, and rendered them, by great labour and skill, objects of beauty as well as eloquent records of the past. Confining ourselves, however, for the present to the ruder efforts of early nations, we are led by a consideration of the altar formed by Moses, with twelve pillars about it, to those extraordinary temples found in various parts of the world, termed DRUIDICAL, and of which Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain (although it may be comparatively a late specimen), will serve us as a perfect example. You have on the next page a plan of this extraordinary monument as it appeared, probably, when it was whole. The outer circle consisted of thirty upright stones of large size, placed at nearly equal distances and bound together at the top by the same number of stones in an horizontal position, forming a continuous entablature, so to speak. Within this was a second circle of smaller upright stones without an entablature. And again, within this, an arrangement of large and small stones, which will be better understood by examining the plan than from words. There are five pairs of upright stones, each pair carrying an horizontal stone (the three together have been termed a trilithon), with three other small upright stones before them; and in the central space you will observe a large flat stone, 16 feet long, 4 feet broad, and twenty inches thick, which has been called the altar. |