expanse of which is broken only by numerous barrows), is very striking,—almost sublime. Your lively imagination would lead you to view them as things endowed with life, which, having outlived their age, had gathered themselves together for mutual countenance and support. Vivid and pleasant is my recollection of the hours I spent some years ago amongst these old stones on Salisbury Plain. I have a little more to say about them, but I must reserve this for my next communication. We shall be more lively by-and-by, as we advance.

LETTER II.

AM glad to find that my first letter has interested you sufficiently to lead to the suggestion, that the notices of some of the monu

ments alluded to might have been fuller without being tedious. You will observe, however, if you look back, that I had not completed my remarks on Stonehenge, and we will now, if you please, return for a few minutes to that most extraordinary monument, which, in some respects, has no parallel.

In many parts of the world, including America, large circles of upright stones are to be found; but Stonehenge is peculiar and distinct. Most of the stones in this monument have been worked square by hand,—and on the top of the upright stones, projections, technically called tenons, are formed to fit into indentations, or mortices, in the horizontal stones, so as to confine the whole together.

The diameter of the outer circle is 105 feet; of the second circle, 87 feet. The height of the stones composing the outer circle is nearly 16 feet, their width 7 feet, and their thickness 3 feet; those form

ing the trilithons are several feet higher; I calculated the weight of one of these to be 19 or 20 tons. Around the whole is a vallum or ditch, 300 feet in diameter, having an opening on one side approached by a wide avenue. Some of the American inclosures are five times as large as this.

The age and purpose of Stonehenge have given rise to a vast deal of discussion. The first published notice of it occurs in the works of Nennius, who wrote in the ninth century, and who states that four hundred and sixty British nobles were murdered at a conference between Vortigern and Hengist in the fifth century, and that Stonehenge was raised to perpetuate their memory. In a Saxon MS. quoted in Dugdale's "Monasticon," it is even called Stanhengist, to show its connection with the leader named. Geoffroy of Monmouth adopts the same origin, but brings in supernatural agency to aid the story.

Inigo Jones, in an essay on the subject, published in 1655, endeavours to prove that it is a Roman temple of the Tuscan order, dedicated to Cœlus; an opinion hardly less unsound than that of Mr. Browne, in 1823, who asserts that it is antediluvian, and rather suspects that Adam had a hand in the direction of it! One writer has asserted that the blocks are not stones, but are formed artificially, of concrete, in moulds! The opinion of the majority is, as you know, that the inclosure was constructed for religious

C

purposes, under the direction of the Druids, at a very early date. Mr. Britton has an interesting article on this monument in the Penny Cyclopædia.

I remember you were much interested by a paper on this subject read by the Rev. Edward Duke, at the Sailsbury meeting of the Archæological Institute, in which the author repeated a belief expressed by him three years before, that Stonehenge formed part of a planetarium, in connection with Abury and other remains, having a meridional line of not less than thirty-two miles. He saw in the thirty stones and thirty spaces, the thirty days and thirty nights into which anciently the months were divided; and found the inclination of the ecliptic as compared with the plane of the equator, unmistakably indicated by the angle formed by a line drawn from the top of the outer circle to the top of the trilithons. With this, however, I will not meddle. Mr. Squier, an American archæologist, who has recently visited Stonehenge, has pointed out by admeasurement that two detached fallen stones in the avenue originally stood in the centre of this, one behind the other, in a line with the main opening in the outer circle and with the centre of the altar, and he maintains that they constituted the veil of the temple, the screen of the sacred place.

How these stones were raised and made to stand exactly their proper height, not an easy task, is a matter for discussion, but I fear to dilate upon it.

If we stay longer on Salisbury Plain, pleasant place as it is, we shall never get to the end of the long journey which is before us.

The temple at Abury, in the same county, was much more extensive than Stonehenge, but less artificial in arrangement, and probably of even earlier date. It consisted of one large circle inclosing two double circles. The area inclosed at Abury was more than twenty-eight acres. Two avenues of stones, communicating at different parts of the outer circle at Abury, produced the form of a snake, and have led to dissertations showing its connection with ophiolatry, or serpent-worship—a very ancient superstition in Egypt and the East, and to which the primitive Druids were addicted. Although with us the symbol of the evil spirit, the serpent was recognised in India and Egypt, and also in Greece, as a friendly deity. Pliny describes the serpent's egg, which he says was worn by the Druids as their distinguishing badge. Many marvellous powers were ascribed to it. Some have conjectured that the temples of which I have been speaking, as well as Carnac, in Brittany, and others, were dedicated to the united worship of the sun and the serpent, and that their form was emblematical of the combination. An "intelligent foreigner," who, gazing back at night from Hyde Park along the serpentine line of light which the lamps up Piccadilly produce, should find in that a proof that the Londoners of to-day are