But This Is A Smaller Matter, And Of No Great
Import One Way Or Other.
From this pleasant and agreeable day's work I returned to
Clarendon, and the next day took another short tour to the hills to
see that celebrated piece of antiquity, the wonderful Stonehenge,
being six miles from Salisbury, north, and upon the side of the
River Avon, near the town of Amesbury.
It is needless that I
should enter here into any part of the dispute about which our
learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselves that several books
(and one of them in folio) have been published about it; some
alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple and altar, or place of
sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument or trophy of victory;
others a monument for the dead, as Mr. Aubrey, and the like.
Again, some will have it be British, some Danish, some Saxon, some
Roman, and some, before them all, Phoenician.
I shall suppose it, as the majority of all writers do, to be a
monument for the dead, and the rather because men's bones have been
frequently dug up in the ground near them. The common opinion that
no man could ever count them, that a baker carried a basket of
bread and laid a loaf upon every stone, and yet never could make
out the same number twice, this I take as a mere country fiction,
and a ridiculous one too. The reason why they cannot easily be
told is that many of them lie half or part buried in the ground;
and a piece here and a piece there only appearing above the grass,
it cannot be known easily which belong to one stone and which to
another, or which are separate stones, and which are joined
underground to one another; otherwise, as to those which appear,
they are easy to be told, and I have seen them told four times
after one another, beginning every time at a different place, and
every time they amounted to seventy-two in all; but then this was
counting every piece of a stone of bulk which appeared above the
surface of the earth, and was not evidently part of and adjoining
to another, to be a distinct and separate body or stone by itself.
The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in
most authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the
last. The figure was at first circular, and there were at least
four rows or circles within one another. The main stones were
placed upright, and they were joined on the top by cross-stones,
laid from one to another, and fastened with vast mortises and
tenons. Length of time has so decayed them that not only most of
the cross-stones which lay on the top are fallen down, but many of
the upright also, notwithstanding the weight of them is so
prodigious great. How they came thither, or from whence (no stones
of that kind being now to be found in that part of England near it)
is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no
engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir
them.
Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreign countries,
as well as here, to move heavier weights than we find practicable
now. How else did Solomon's workmen build the battlement or
additional wall to support the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which
the Temple was built, which was all built of stones of Parian
marble, each stone being forty cubits long and fourteen cubits
broad, and eight cubits high or thick, which, reckoning each cubit
at two feet and a half of our measure (as the learned agree to do),
was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad, and twenty feet
thick?
These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, and in
which others agree, were very large, though not so large--the
upright stones twenty-four feet high, seven feet broad, sixteen
feet round, and weigh twelve tons each; and the cross-stones on the
top, which he calls coronets, were six or seven tons. But this
does not seem equal; for if the cross-stones weighed six or seven
tons, the others, as they appear now, were at least five or six
times as big, and must weigh in proportion; and therefore I must
think their judgment much nearer the case who judge the upright
stones at sixteen tons or thereabouts (supposing them to stand a
great way into the earth, as it is not doubted but they do), and
the coronets or cross-stones at about two tons, which is very large
too, and as much as their bulk can be thought to allow.
Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--
namely, for an erection or building so ancient that no history has
handed down to us the original. As we find it, then, uncertain, we
must leave it so. It is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and
it is a great loss that the true history of it is not known. But
since it is not, I think the making so many conjectures at the
reality, when they know lots can but guess at it, and, above all,
the insisting so long and warmly on their private opinions, is but
amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps lies the
deeper for their search into it.
The downs and plains in this part of England being so open, and the
surface so little subject to alteration, there are more remains of
antiquity to be seen upon them than in other places. For example,
I think they tell us there are three-and-fifty ancient encampments
or fortifications to be seen in this one county--some whereof are
exceeding plain to be seen; some of one form, some of another; some
of one nation, some of another--British, Danish, Saxon, Roman--as
at Ebb Down, Burywood, Oldburgh Hill, Cummerford, Roundway Down,
St. Ann's Hill, Bratton Castle, Clay Hill, Stournton Park,
Whitecole Hill, Battlebury, Scrathbury, Tanesbury, Frippsbury,
Southbury Hill, Amesbury, Great Bodwin, Easterley, Merdon, Aubery,
Martenscil Hill, Barbury Castle, and many more.
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