Some of them are here so large as to embrace not much less than an acre in their area, and, in forms mathematically circular, sometimes intersect each other. That the ewe will not bite them is evident from the fact, that though the sward both within and around is nibbled close by the sheep, the grass which defines the rings to the breadth of several feet grows dark and rank.

heavens. As the coach rolled on they vanished rapidly from our gaze, but not without having imprinted, in indelible impressions, upon the tablets of memory their stern and gigantic forms. We resolved, as we journeyed through the nightfall across that dreary plain, to return again ere many days had passed, and in the shadow of those antique monitors to contemplate their Titanic ruins, to ponder their history, and, if it might be, to penetrate the mystery of their origin. How easy and natural it is to form such a resolution! and how many events may combine to defer or prevent its execution! A period equal to the average generations of man had passed away before an opportunity occurred of reaping the promised gratification. In the meanwhile, however, we had not forgotten the old stones, but had, on the contrary, grown so familiar with their forms, from numerous pictorial representations, and so intimate with the various theories that have been broached respecting them, that the curiosity and interest so early exer-stigated, doubtless, by the success which has atcised had rarely slumbered long.

Taking advantage, therefore, of a late brief holiday, we stepped early in the morning into a railway carriage at the Waterloo terminus, and arrived in the main street of Salisbury before noon. A walk of nine miles beneath the sultry sun of August being rather too much for our philosophy, we borrowed a gig and a driver from an accommodating stable-keeper, and drove off at once towards the Plain, where have stood-for who knows how many centuries ?-the objects of our search. Passing Old Sarum at our right-where, for ages, a few brick or mud walls, a cartload or two of thatch, and some piles of rotten timber, were represented in the Senate by two members of parliament-we soon arrived upon the edge of that vast series of undulating downs which figure in the map of England as Salisbury Plain. We could recollect enough of the locality to feel agreeably surprised, that since we passed that way in the days of youth, a wonderful change had come over the scene. Where, thirty years ago, the old stage-coach rolled along a barren down, cropped only by a few sheep, now stood many a broad and gently-whispering sea of wavy corn, awaiting the coming of the sickle and the harvest wain to fill the garners of the husbandman. Many thousands of acres have in fact been redeemed from barrenness, and now repay with plenteous crops the labour and expense of the exploit. We may remark, by the way, that though we saw many fields of grain inclosed by tall hedges, in the course of the journey down, which were beaten flat to the ground by the heavy gales and pelting rains of the late ungenial summer, yet here, on these exposed high lands, bare of hedges, and open to every wind that blows, not a prostrate ear or crippled straw was to be seen-a circumstance suggestive to the farmer, who in this country not unfrequently sacrifices a tenth or more of his land for the sake of the supposed shelter of the hedges, near which nothing will grow.

When fairly arrived beyond the limits of cultivation, we were struck by the frequency and magnitude of those dark circular rings in the grass, supposed by the rustics of a former generation to be the work of fairies, who

"By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make Whereof the ewe not bites."

Glancing round upon the landscape, here so impressively wild and singular, we observe far down on the left a small white tent, glimmering in the sunshine like a speck of snow upon the green side of a gentle declivity. Our driver informs us that it is the tent of a settler, an enterprising fellow who has pitched there with his wife and three daughters, near to a running stream, but several miles away from any human habitation, upon a spot of ground bought of the owner for a moderate sum. He has realized the condition of an emigrant without the expense or trouble of emigrating-in

tended the cultivation of the land in the neighbourhood; and in all likelihood he will find it less trouble to bring his land into a remunerative condition than if it were so much forest situated in the backwoods of America, with half-a-dozen trees to every rood, to be got rid of ere it was made fit for cultivation by the spade or the plough.

It

About half-way to Stonehenge we left the dusty road, and trotted more pleasantly over the swelling slopes of the grassy plain. Owing to the undulating surface of the ground, the "stones" are not visible in this direction until you have approached to within something less than two miles of the platform on which they stand. When first seen, they might be mistaken for stunted trees or bushes; but as you approach, they gradually expand into definite forms, which can hardly fail to strike a spectator as strangely fantastic and grotesque. If a family of baby Titans, whose toys were rocks of from fifty to a hundred tons each, were amusing themselves, as infants do, by building houses, just such a house as Stonehenge appears at a distance would such infants make; and, to carry the comparison further, one might fancy that, having built it up, the urchins had kicked down half of it in frolic, and abandoned it for some other game. is not until the traveller has alighted among these startling ruins, and can lay his hand upon the huge lichen-covered blocks, that any very intelligible evidences of design are at this distance of time traceable in what remains of the original erection. He sees one misshapen monster pillar standing alone at some considerable distance from the rest, which he probably conjectures to have had a companion at some long-past period, and that the two together, perhaps overlapped with a third, formed the principal gateway or entrance to what the world seems agreed to consider as an old and vast druidical temple, used for purposes of worship and sacrifice by the aboriginal Britons. On turning his attention to the alleged temple itself, he finds enough yet remaining to show him that it originally consisted of an outer and inner circle of stone pillars, both inclosing two ellipses of similar pillars, all the pillars being single stones, though differing greatly in height and bulk; that the outer circle is by far the most massive and imposing, its pillars originally supporting on their tops an im

post or architrave extending round the entire circle. He finds eleven of these pillars, bearing five architraves, yet standing near the supposed principal entrance, and six more in different parts of the circle. On entering within the circle, he is greeted with a congregation of cyclopean rocks, lying partly embedded in the soil, or still standing upright, through the storms and decay of thousands of years, where the builders placed them. From those which are overthrown, he sees that the upright pillars have rude projecting tenons upon their summits, and the imposts have mortises hollowed for their reception, and that the parts fitted together like ball-and-socket. He will find several of the erect masses declining from the perpendicular, and one, the tallest of the whole, leaning fearfully inward, and threatening to fall and crush the smaller stones beneath.

which, whatever was its original purpose. it is safe to assert was never intended by its architect. It is of no use to question the shepherds for a solution of the mystery around; and the next available source of information is an appeal to the stones themselves, of which, without much trouble, we ascertain that there are three different sorts-two of them of a very hard species of sand-stone, and the other, of which there is but one specimen, resembling that brought from Derbyshire. Hard as the stones are, however-and they defy the edge of your knife-they are plentifully inscribed with the initials of visitors, some of whom have left the date of their performances, which serve to show us how trifling is the effect of time upon their compact surfaces-an inscription cut in 1802 being, save for the lichens with which it is overgrown, as sharp as though it had been done yesterday. But the stones tell us nothing of the scenes of which they were witnesses in ages long past, or of the worship of that temple, if temple it was, which they once constituted; and in default of any solution to the dark riddle here propounded by more than a hundred veritable sphinxes, we turn naturally to the suggestions and conjectures of the wise men of old and modern times, who have favoured the world by publishing their opinions on the subject.

position previously thrown out, that these prodigious masses are not natural stones at all, but artificial compounds mixed from sand and gluey cements-supporting his opinion by a quotation from Pliny, in reference to the dust of Puteoli, which, mixed with water, became solid as stone.

From the confusion of the battered and ruined blocks contained within and lying about the outer circle, the visitor will find it difficult to re-erect, in imagination, the scattered debris, and to form a mental picture of what the temple was in its primeval stern and stormy grandeur. If he arrive in the middle of a summer's day, as we did, he may chance to find the outer circle of stones projecting their cool shadows over several separate and distinct parties of pic-nic visitors, whose carriages Passing over the old legends which ascribe the are drawn up in rank, while they spread their table- erection of Stonehenge to the enchanter Merlin, cloths upon the prostrate columns, light their we may begin by noticing the conjecture of Camcamp-fires in the lee of the protecting blocks, den, who wrote in 1586. He offers no information and, with laughter and merriment, celebrate an with regard to the purpose of the structure, simply al fresco banquet amid the stern memorials of the confining himself to lamentations that the authors vanished centuries. Perchance an artist is pre- of so noble a work have passed into oblivion; but, sent, sketching the grim masses, as they rise considering that stones for building are in that sharply relieved against the cloudy sky, or labour-part very difficult to find, he countenances a suping with imitative tints to catch the play of light and shadow upon the dry and withered lichens that overlap every portion of their eccentric forms. Around, the silly sheep are grazing quietly, while a group of weather-beaten "shepherds of Salisbury Plain," seated or stretched supinely upon a huge fragment of a column, are eyeing the gay ladies of the pic-nic parties, or exchanging simple jokes and most original comments upon their manners and appearance. Rude specimens of humanity are these shepherds, with their lank thatchy hair and tawny skin, and drawling sluggish speech. One of them, a storm-beaten veteran "of four-score odd," will tell you that for fifty-four years he has pastured sheep around these ruins in all weathers, and that he can recollect no change in them-that as they were when, a young man, he drove his first flock to the downs to feed, so precisely, as far as he can see, are they now. But he will point you to two of the most enormous blocks, which, together with their superincumbent impost, fell on the morning of the third of January, 1797, just before his time, with a crash that shook the solid earth for a mile round. On turning to verify this, the latest triumph of time over one of the earliest works of man, you find that Mr. Somebody, from Warminster or Devizes, who is at this very moment helping Mrs. Somebody to the liver-wing of a cold fowl, upon the fragment of another architrave, for a dining-table, has tethered his favourite mare to this one, and made a manger of the mortise, from which the sleek beast is contentedly discussing a feed of oats-an application of this ancient monument,

Inigo Jones, writing in the reign of James 1, makes it appear that Stonehenge was a Roman temple, built after the Tuscan order of architecture, and dedicated to the service of Coelus or Uranus, from whom the ancients imagined all things had their beginning a strange opinion coming from so great a man, and supported by reasons which, as they have since been completely overthrown, it is not necessary here to quote.

Speed, about thirty years afterwards, informed the public that Stonehenge was a monumental trophy set up by Aurelius, surnamed Ambrosius, in memory of his nobility, who in the year of Christ 475 were slaughtered by the treacherous Saxons under Vortigern, and buried at this spota conjecture probably borrowed from that very legendary sage, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who flourished in the twelfth century, and one which is not of much value.

Gibson, writing in 1694, recites various opinions current in his time, but differing very much from each other; some ascribing the work to the Phonicians, and some to the Druids; some regarding it as a place of sacrifice, others as a monument to the memory of queen Boadicea; and others again looking upon it as the work of the Danes, and a place for the election or coronation of their kings.

tween two ditches. This is supposed to have anciently been the arena of the chariot races, in which the early Britons, according to Cæsar, so much excelled. At the east end of the course, a huge body of earth has been thrown up across nearly its whole breadth; upon which it is supposed sat the adjudicators and chief spectators. The west end is carved into an arc, in which the chariots may have wheeled round to turn. There is a valley in mid career, still rather steep, which must have enhanced the difficulty and interest of the race. A finer piece of ground for the purpose of such a contest could hardly be found. We must warn the stranger, however, that if he would see the cursus, he must look for it. Time and vegetation have done so much towards obliterating the traces of this ancient hippodrome, that the majority of visitors to Stonehenge leave the spot without seeing it, or recognising its purpose if they chance to stumble upon it. It was so long forgotten, that Dr. Stukely, in 1723, laid claim to the discovery of it; and to many of the dwellers in the neighbouring towns its existence is practically unknown.

different periods; but as it has since been shown that he mistook Anglo-Saxon tombs for Celtic British, and even for tombs which might have been Roman, his classification is not much to be relied on. Among the numerous barrows scattered throughout our island, those which contain, or contained, within them a rude chamber of rough stones, often of gigantic dimensions, are with most reason attributed to the ancient Britons. We say 'contained," because, in most instances, the earth around them has been removed, probably from its value-being a soft mould-to the farmer, or perhaps from the notion that the tumuli were the repositories of hidden treasures; and now only the structure of rough stones remains, under the name of a cromlech. Such eromlechs exist in various parts of the British islands, and their appearance is familiar to every traveller; but there is little doubt that they were all once enveloped in mounds of earth. Among the most notable are Kit's Cotty House in Kent, that of Chûn-Quoit, in Cornwall, and the one at Plas Newydd, in the Isle of Anglesea. The barrows in the vicinity of Stonehenge contain no such colossal stones, but small cists or chests, skeletons, burnt bones, and weapons, im

Such, however, is not the case with regard to the barrows, with which the undulating lands around Stonehenge are sprinkled in every direc-plements, personal ornaments, and specimens of tion. These are huge mounds of earth of a flattened, pyramidal, or campaniform shape, as many as fifty of which may be counted at a time from one point of view. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, in his "History of Ancient Wiltshire," gives a map of the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, in which are shown above three hundred of these ancient barrows or tumuli. Many of them have been opened from time to time, and the investigation has always shown that they are ancient burial-places, containing the bones of the dead, sometimes in cists and at others uninclosed, and sometimes in urns or pots, in a burnt state. Together with human remains, implements of stone and weapons of stone and bronze, and even of iron, have been discovered. Along with the pottery of the ancient Britons have been found beads, personal ornaments, and British and even Roman coins. The popular idea that these mounds contained the bones of armies slaughtered in great battles, is thus shown to be erroneous, as they are generally found, on examination, to be the tombs, if not of single persons, of families or small numbers of dead. There can be no doubt but that, at a period very far remote, Stonehenge and its surrounding neighbourhood was a district of considerable national importance; and it is not improbable that it was long the burial-place of kings, chiefs, priests, and warriors, with their families; and that the ceremonies at-ligious worship. tending their interment, including perhaps the sacrifice of victims, were solemnised at the great stone temple, and were followed by games, processions, races, and athletic contests in the adjacent cursus, in the presence of unnumbered spectators. As Roman remains have been discovered, not only in the surrounding barrows, but within the area of Stonehenge itself, the conclusion can hardly be avoided, that not only previous to, but during and after the occupation of Britain by the Romans, the mode of interment in barrows was practised. Sir R. C. Hoare, who opened and examined a great many of these tumuli in different parts of the country, classified and arranged them according to

British and Roman pottery, all of which are often found to have undergone the action of fire; and it is pretty plain, therefore, that these barrows are the work of a later period.

But we have arrived at the limits of our paper. Our driver, who has been seated comfortably in the gig while we have been musing among the grey stones or wandering about in their vicinity, has just knocked the ashes out of his third pipe; long shadows from the tall columns are streaming across the plain; the pic-nickers are all gone; the shepherds have vanished; and one old veteran with a wooden leg is left sole monarch of Stonehenge, as we mount our gig once more, and roll back over the gentle slopes and along the dusty road towards Salisbury. An hour's delightful drive, and the " spire of Sarum," rising several feet higher than the cross of St. Paul's into the evening sky, comes into view; and down in the valley on the left the winding river rolls its sinuous silvery thread through the meadows. We alight at the antiquated arched entrance leading to the cathedral, beneath whose lofty roof we wander for an hour in the "dim religious light" of that witching fane, which for six hundred years has stood a graceful monument of man's transcending genius, and of the devoted sacrifice of human industry, energy, and skill, to the purposes of re

A solitary dinner at a solitary hotel; a solitary ramble afterwards through the solitary streets, to the music of a clear stream of water that runs babbling through them; a solitary couch, shared not even by a dream; and thus ends our visit to Stonehenge.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?-There is no place like a deathbed to answer the great question-"What is your life?" Then, if not before, will the folly or wisdom of all life's doings be manifest. To have then a good hope through grace will be above all price. But to "die and give no the world of spirits under a cloud of gloom, must be dreadsign"-to face death without a Saviour-to pass away to ful indeed. To escape such an hour, and all of evil that lies beyond, is surely worth any worldly sacrifice.