[CX] Stonehenge. Old legends gave it a mythic origin. Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed it to Merlin, the stones having been brought over from Ireland by magic. It was not a Druid Temple, but a Saxon ring, set up—after the Romans had left Britain—for parliamentary and coronation purposes. "Roman pottery and coins have been found under the stones, and they are fitted with mortice and tenon, an art unknown in Britain till it was taught by the Romans." Compare Dryden's Epistle to Dr. Charleton (Ep. II.)
Stonehenge, once thought a temple, you have found
A throne, where kings, our earthly Gods, were crown'd.
and Henry Crabb Robinson's account of a visit to Stonehenge, in the second volume of his Diary and Correspondence, p. 230.—ED.
[CY] This must refer to Palmyra. The Baalbec ruins are, for the most part, not marble, but limestone.—ED.
[CZ] The Navagos and several other American tribes have this legend; but see Note B in the Appendix to this volume, p. [392].—ED.
[DA] Before the time of Solon, the Athenians wore golden τέττιγες—probably either brooches, or pins with a golden cicada for the head—as a sign that they considered themselves αὐτόχθονες, since the grasshopper τέττιξ (cicada) was supposed to spring out of the ground.—ED.
[DB] The Ganges—sacred river of India—rising in the snow-clad Himalaya, was believed to have a celestial origin.—ED.
[DC] The great river of Western Africa, which was supposed, until recent geographical discovery, to lose itself in the sand.—ED.
[DE] Compare The Prelude, book viii. I. 133 (see vol. iii. p. 276). Also In Memoriam, stanza xxiii.—