STONEHENGE.
This celebrated monument of antiquity, a view of which is given in the cut on the next page, stands in the middle of a flat area near the summit of a hill, six miles distant from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a double circular bank and ditch, nearly thirty feet broad, after crossing which an ascent of thirty yards leads to the work. The whole fabric, of which the cut exhibits only a section, was originally composed of two circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about one hundred and eight feet in diameter, consisting, when entire, of sixty stones, thirty uprights, and thirty imposts, of which there now remain twenty-four uprights only, seventeen standing, and seven down, three feet and a half asunder, and eight imposts. Eleven uprights have their five imposts on them at the grand entrance: these stones are from thirteen to twenty feet high. The smaller circle is somewhat more than eight feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of forty smaller stones, the highest measuring about six feet, nineteen only of which now remain, and only eleven standing. The walk between these two circles is three hundred feet in circumference. The adytum, or cell, is an oval formed of ten stones, from sixteen to twenty-two feet high, in pairs, and with imposts above thirty feet high, rising in hight as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair: the highest eight feet. Within these, are nineteen other smaller single stones, of which six only are standing. At the upper end of the adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches thick, sixteen feet long, and four broad: it is pressed down by the weight of the vast stones which have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights and imposts, comprehending the altar, is one hundred and forty. The stones, which have been by some considered artificial, were most probably brought from those called the gray weathers on Marlborough downs, distant fifteen or sixteen miles; and if tried with a tool, appear of the same hardness, grain and color, being generally reddish. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found in digging in and about Stonehenge; and in the circumjacent barrows, human bones. From the plain to this structure there are three entrances, the most considerable of which is from the north-east; and at each of them were raised, on the outside of the trench, two huge stones, with two smaller parallel ones within.
STONEHENGE.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his history of the Britons, written in the reign of King Stephen, represents this monument as having been erected at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius, the last British king, in memory of four hundred and sixty Britons who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. Polydore Virgil says that it was erected by the Britons as the sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius, and other writers consider it to have been that of the famous British queen Boadicea. Inigo Jones is of opinion that it was a Roman temple; and this conclusion he draws from a stone sixteen feet in length, and four in breadth, placed in an exact position to the eastward, altar-fashion. By Charlton it is ascribed to the Danes, who were two years masters of Wiltshire; a tin tablet, on which were some unknown characters, having been dug up in the vicinity, in the reign of Henry VIII. This tablet, which is lost, might have given some information respecting its founders. Its common name, Stonehenge, is Saxon, and signifies a “stone gallows,” to which the stones, having transverse imposts, bear some resemblance. It is also called in Welch, choir gour, or the giants’ dance. Mr. Grose, the antiquary, is of opinion that Doctor Stukely has completely proved this structure to have been a British temple, in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the words choir gour, “the great choir or temple.” It was customary with the Druids to place one large stone on another for a religious memorial; and these they often placed so equably, that even a breath of wind would sometimes make them vibrate. Of such stones one remains at this day in the pile of Stonehenge. The ancients distinguished stones erected with a religious view, by the name of ambrosiæ petræ, amber stones, the word amber implying whatever is solar and divine. According to Bryant, Stonehenge is composed of these amber stones; and hence the next town is denominated Ambresbury.