As at the beginning the shade came feelingly upon our right shoulders, so now the light from the north, where it opened as it were: though I could discern no defined light or shade upon the earth that way, which I earnestly watched for; yet it was manifestly by degrees, and with oscillations, going back a little, and quickly advancing further; till at length upon the first lucid point appearing in the heavens, where the sun was, I could distinguish pretty plainly a rim of light running along-side of us a good while together, or sweeping by at our elbows from west to east. Just then, having good reason to suppose the totality ended with us, I looked on my watch, and found it to be full three minutes and a half more: now the hill-tops changed their black into blue again, and I could distinguish a horizon where the centre of darkness was before: the men cried out, they saw the copped hill again, which they had eagerly looked for: but still it continued dark to the south-east; yet I cannot say that ever the horizon that way was undistinguishable: immediately we heard the larks chirping and singing very briskly for joy of the restored luminary, after all things had been hushed into a most profound and universal silence: the heavens and earth now appeared exactly like morning before sun-rise, of a greyish cast, but rather more blue interspersed; and the earth, as far as the verge of the hill reached, was of a dark green or russet colour.
As soon as the sun emerged, the clouds grew thicker, and the light was very little amended for a minute or more, like a cloudy morning slowly advancing. After about the middle of the totality, and so after the emersion of the sun, we saw Venus very plainly, but no other star. Salisbury steeple now appeared. The clouds never removed, so that we could take no account of it afterward, but in the evening it lightened very much. I hasted home to write this letter; and the impression was so vivid upon my mind, that I am sure I could, for some days after, have wrote the same account of it, and very precisely. After supper I made a drawing of it from my imagination, upon the same paper I had taken a prospect of the country before.
I must confess to you, that I was (I believe) the only person in England that regretted not the cloudiness of the day, which added so much to the solemnity of the sight, and which imcomparably exceeded, in my apprehension, that of 1715, which I saw very perfectly from the top of Boston steeple in Lincolnshire, where the air was very clear: but the night of this was more complete and dreadful. There indeed I saw both sides of the shadow come from a great distance, and pass beyond us to a great distance; but this eclipse had much more of variety and majestic terror: so that I cannot but felicitate myself upon the opportunity of seeing these two rare accidents of nature, in so different a manner: yet I should willingly have lost this pleasure for your more valuable advantage of perfecting the noble theory of the celestial bodies, which last time you gave the world so nice a calculation of; and wish the sky had now as much favoured us for an addition to your honour and great skill, which I doubt not to be as exact in this as before.Ambsbury, Wilts, May 10, 1724.
Return we to matters of antiquity. Upon this very hill-top are great pits dug lately by order of my lord Charlton for clay, which they find here of a very stiff sort, by nature let in like veins among clefts of the solid chalk: the workmen here, whilst they have been busy in taking it up, have found many Romans coins, silver and brass, some very deep in the earth, as they say; several of which I have now by me. I saw likewise a very fair gold Constantius; the reverse, two Genii holding a shield, vot. xxx. victoria Augg. It seems as if the Romans, with their wonted sagacity, had been occupied here in the same way, to make pottery ware, and not neglected to leave proof of it according to their method. I took notice likewise of one side of the summit being covered with oyster-shells loose upon the surface; and how they came there I could get no information.
Icening-street.
The Icening-street runs between this hill and the Bourn river, coming from Newberry, as I suppose, through Chute forest, where vulgarly called Chute causeway: at Lurgishal it makes a fine terrace-walk in the garden of Sir Philip Medows; then passes the Bourn river about Tudworth, and so by this place to the eastern gate of Old Sarum, the Roman Sorbiodunum.Sorbiodunum, where it runs most precisely north-east and south-west, as we said before. TAB. LXV.This city is perfectly round, and formed upon one of the most elegant designs one can imagine: probably a fortress of the old Britons, and I fancy somewhat like the famous Alesia in Gaul, memorable for the ancient Hercules, its founder, and for the siege of the great Cæsar; which only his genius could have taken in his circumstances. The prospect of this place is at present very august, and would have afforded us a most noble sight when in perfection: such a one will not be difficult to conceive when we have described it. It fills up the summit of a high and steep hill, which originally rose equally on all sides to an apex: the whole work is 1600 foot diameter, included in a ditch of a prodigious depth: it is so contrived that in effect it has two ramparts, the inner and outer, the ditch between: upon the inner, which is much the higher, stood a strong wall of twelve foot thick, their usual standard, which afforded a parapet at top for the defendants, with battlements quite round: upon still higher ground is another deep circular ditch, of 500 foot diameter; this is the castle or citadel. Upon the inner rampire of this was likewise another wall, I suppose of like thickness: so that between the inner ditch and the outer wall, all around, was the city. This is divided into equal parts by a meridian line: both the banks are still left; one to the south, the other to the north; and these had walls upon them too: the traces of all the walls are still manifest, and some parts of them left; but we may say with the poet of the whole,
————lapsis ingentia muris
Saxa jacent, nulloque domus custode tenetur. Lucan. I.
In the middle of each half, toward the east and west, is a gate, with each a lunette before it, deeply ditched, and two oblique entries; that to the east is square, to the west round: the hollow where the wall stood is visible quite round, though the materials are well-nigh carried away to New Sarum: in every quarter were two towers, the foundations plainly appearing: then, with those that were upon the cardinal points, the gates and the median rampart, as it must necessarily be understood, there were twelve in the whole circumference; so that, supposing it about 5000 feet in circumference, there was a tower at every 400. Hence we may imagine the nature of the city was thus: a circular street went round in the middle between the inner and outer fortifications, concentric to the whole work; and that cross streets, like radii, fronted each tower: then there were twenty-four islets of building for houses, temples, or the like. Now such is the design of this place, that if one half was taken by an enemy, the other would still be defensible; and at last they might retire into the castle. The city is now ploughed over, and not one house left. In the angle to the north-west stood the cathedral and episcopal palace: the foundations are at present so conspicuous, that I could easily mark out the ground-plot of it, as in the [65th plate]: near it is a large piece of the wall left, made of hewn stone with holes quite through at equal spaces. One would imagine the Romans, in laying down the area of this city, had Plato’s rules in view,[136] in his fifth dialogue of laws. Many wells have been filled up, and, no doubt, with noble reliques of antiquity: they must have been very deep, and especially that in the castle, and dug out of the solid chalk. Of the castle-wall a good deal of huge fragments and foundations are left: a double winding stair-case led up to the gate, where bits of arch-work and immense strength of stone and mortar remains; and within, many foundations and traces of buildings. In the north-east corner of the city there is another rampart upon a radius, including a squarish piece of ground; probably for some public edifice, but what in particular, is now hard to say. TAB. LXVI.Certainly, for strength, air, and prospect over the lovely downs, and for salubrity, this place was well calculated, and impregnable to any thing but death and hunger. The river Avon runs near the bottom of the hill. The history of its glory, its strange vicissitudes, and its ruin by removal of the church to New Sarum, may be learnt from Camden, Burton, and other authors; my business being chiefly to describe things: but the very sight of such a carcass would naturally from a traveller extort such an expostulation: Is this the ancient episcopal see, and the seat of warlike men, now become corn-fields, and pasture for sheep? Is this the place where synods have been held, and British parliaments; where all the states of the kingdom were summoned to swear fealty to William the Conqueror; the palace of the most potent British and Saxon kings, and Roman emperors? and conclude with Rutilius,
Non indignemur mortalia corpora solvi,