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stupendous monuments of Avebury and Stonehenge, have uniformly derided the labours and the fancies of those who have endeavoured to investigate their original, and to direct the examiner to their pristine appropriation. The numerous writers who have treated on the subject of these impressive relics, leave it involved in a mysterious cloud, that imparts additional solemnity to the silent gloom in which the monuments are themselves enveloped. For a compendious statement of various surmises regarding the date of their erection, and their intended purpose, I refer the reader to the Beauties for Wiltshire;* and confine myself to observing that the most judicious writers agree in referring both monuments to the Britous, although probably erected at periods widely dissimilar. Their amplitude of proportions, and superior dignity of character, suggest the idea of their being intended as metropolitan places of assembly,† although the nature of the convocation is unknown, and lost, probably for ever, in the deep shades which have fallen over the more intricate and curious parts of the customs and manners of the ancient inhabitants of this island.

ROCKING STONES, AND ANALOGOUS PHENOMENA.-In Cornwall, Devonshire, Wales, and other parts of South Britain, abounding in craggy rocks, and in the various rude but grand productions of nature incidental to a calcareous soil in the neighbourhood of the ocean, there are found many surprising works which appear to hesitate between nature and art, and are probably indebted to both. Whilst investigating such districts, particular care is necessary to restrain the imagination, that creative

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Beauties for Wilts, under the articles of Avebury and Stonehenge.

+ Although the population of Britain is described as being divided into numerous tribes, or petty states, one form of religion prevailed amongst all, as an establishment; and it is believed that the ministers of that religion were all subject to one arch priest or Druid. The priests appear, also, to have been the legal arbiters of the country. It seems far from unlikely that the whole of the British nations might resort, for final appeal, both in civil and religious cases, to one or more great universal courts.

faculty which "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name;" for nature, incumbered, as it would appear, with the tumultuary vestiges of some remote convulsion, often assumes fantastic and imposing shapes, which an ardent mind, intent on the advancement of a favourite hypothesis, may readily shape into the delusive reliques of an unknown idolatry.

But, although there is reason to apprehend that some antiquaries have been occasionally seduced into misconceptious, by the ardour with which they indulged in a chosen pursuit,* it is still evident that, in many instances, the curious eccentricities of nature were improved, and then rendered instruments of superstition, by the ministers of a long forgotten religion. As there is not the slightest reason for believing that such works were undertaken either by the Romans, Saxons, or Danes, they may be securely attributed to the Britons; but as the use of the Tool must have been adopted, it is evident that they were performed in the later and more degenerate days of Druidism, when the strictness of the law was lost in an increase of meretricious blandishment and stratagem.

The most important of these presumed reliques of Druidical superstition may be classed under the following appellations: The Logan, or Rocking stone;† by which term is to be understood

See some remarks on this subject in the Beauties for Cornwall, p. 453, 509, &c.

+ These curious stones are to be seen in several parts of Britain. Examples occur in the Beauties for Cumberland, p. 180; and for Cornwall, p. 497-8.

In Playfair's Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, p. 395-7, are presented some ingenious remarks, intended to shew that the phenomenon of the Rocking stone is often, though possibly not always, merely the curious result of a natural cause; and that many of these presumed Druidical works are, in fact," nothing else than stones, which have been subjected to the universal law of wasting and decay, in such peculiar circumstances, as nearly to bring about an equilibrium of that stable kind, which when slightly dis turbed, re-establishes itself."

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understood a stone, generally of immense bulk and weight, placed on so small a centre, and in so exact an equilibrium, that it moves to a certain degree with the application of a very small power, as the touch of the hand; but which could not be thrown down by any common force. Although these may, in some instances, have required little assistance from art, it appears that much labour has been frequently bestowed to render narrow the basis on which the Logan depends, and thereby to produce the effect.*

The Rock-idol is the name bestowed by Dr. Borlase on several craggs of rock, which exhibit such peculiar features of grandeur and singularity, as to have been probably selected for superstitious uses by the priests of the ancient Britons. Among the most curious of these may be noticed the Cheese-Wring, which is a natural combination of eight rude stones, rising one above another to the height of thirty-two feet, and having a very slender bearing between the third and fourth stones. On the top were two hollows, or basins, one of which remains. An engraving of this curious pile is presented in the Beauties for Cornwall.

Dr. Borlase supposes artificial Rock-basins,† and various marks

Although many rocking-stones may, perhaps, be entirely the works of nature, there is little room for doubting but that art was employed in completing the effect of others. It may be noticed that there are several instances in which the tool has evidently been employed on large masses of rock, as if for the purpose of producing the Logan, although the work is left incomplete.

By the term Rock-basin is understood the hollow indentations often found on the tops of rocks in Cornwall, and sometimes in other districts; and which are supposed to have been used by the Druids. In the Beauties for Cornwall, the editor of that portion of the work, noticing the excavations denominated Rock-Basins, at Carn-breh Hill, observes that they "exist in such numbers, in all situations, as utterly to exclude the hand of man from the great mass; and, therefore, to make some natural, though unknown, process most probable in all." Vide, Beauties for Cornwall, p. 509. But, in the Beauties for Derbyshire, p. 500, a rock-basin is noticed, "which evidently appears to have been cut with a tool."

marks of superstitious labour, to be discoverable on many other curious knolls of rock; but it is possible that the indentations taken for artificial traces of a mysterious mode of religious worship, are often merely the works of nature. That the deities of the Druids might be worshipped under the semblance of rocks (the emblems of firmness, durability, and protection) is, however, quite probable; as a similar superstition can be traced amongst many nations, and as a reverence for the supposed sanctity of certain rocks and stones has been evinced, in a faint degree, by the Irish and Welsh in ages not very remote.*

The same antiquarian writer describes another species of stupendous stone work, which he is disposed to consider as rockdeities of the Britons. These are termed, in Cornwall, Tollmen, from the Cornish words Toll, a hole, and Maen, a stone. They consist of "a large orbicular stone, supported by two stones, between which there is a passage."+ The incumbent mass is of a prodigious size, and was probably placed on the subjacent rocks by some great natural convulsion, though the passage beneath may, perhaps, have been assisted by art, and the whole adopted for some use of priestcraft.

I pass the more quickly over these supposed vestiges of a rude superstition, as it is quite impossible to ascertain, with any resemblance of precision, their destined use or appropriation. Not that the conjectures of ingenuity are wanting; but, in this instance, they impart little interest to the subject on which they are employed. The Rocking-stones may have been used in divination, or in imposing on the multitude, by an indication of divine assent or repulsion; and Rock-basins may have been appropriated to the preservation of lustral water; or to the reception of the blood of victims; or to the retention of libations. But all these

* For more extended remarks on this subject, see Borlase's Antiq, of Cornwall, p. 170.

+ Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall.-See a description of a celebrated and very curious Tollmen, in the Beauties for Cornwall, p. 455-4.

these vestiges are as open to the unsatisfactory chimera of fancy, as the hoar which frost spreads over vegetation, or the mimic-alps of an autumnal sky; since we are necessarily involved in the gloom of entire ignorance, respecting the particular forms and rituals of an unlettered superstition, of so very remote an existence.

CROMLECHS.*-The Cromlech is a rude monument, consisting of several huge upright stones, which act as supporters to a stone placed nearly horizontally. The number of upright stones is very frequently three; but by no means determinately so; and is often not less than six. In a few instances the supporters are still more numerous. The stone forming the top, or covering, is generally of a swelling form; approaching to convexity; and is almost invariably placed in a position more or less shelving. Cromlechs are usually found on spots which are elevated by nature; and are sometimes raised on Carnedds, or hillocks of an artificial construction. Two are occasionally united, or nearly and several may be often seen in the close vicinity of each other, and near sepulchral barrows or carnedds. They, likewise, occur in the midst, or on the edge, of circles of stones arranged by the hand of art. That these are hiefly, if not uniformly, monuments of the early Britons is scarcely to be disputed;† and that they were connected with the rituals of the Druidical religion would appear to be probable, from the frequency with which they occur in the neighbourhood of vestiges which can be rationally attributed only to the Druids.

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Many of these curious monuments are noticed in different volumes of the Beauties, and particularly in those for Cornwall, Devonshire, and Wales. A Cromlech in Cornwall forms the Vignette to the second volume of the Beauties; and one in Devonshire to the fourth volume.

+ Mr. Gough has advanced many arguments in support of a notion that the Cromlechs of Britain were of Danish workmanship; but it is truly remarked in the Beauties for Cornwall, p. 389 (note) that many of these monuments exist in the most hidden recesses of the Welsh mountains; districts which the Danes never penetrated.

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