The President’s Address. 9 
of doors, and bad him goe home and see Stonage; and I wish,” adds 
Gibbons, “all such Aisopicall cocks, as slight these admired stones, 
and other our domestick monuments (by which they might be ad- 
monished to eschew some evil and doe some good), and scrape for 
barley cornes of vanity out of foreign dunghills, might be handled, 
or rather footed, as he was.” Indeed, it would be difficult to finda 
pleasanter or more instructive tour. The visitor would begin, per- 
haps, with Marlborough, pass the large Castle Mound, and coming: 
soon within sight of the grand hill of Silbury, leave the high-road, 
and drive, partly up the ancient roadway, into the venerable circle of 
Abury, perhaps the most interesting of our great national monu- 
ments. There he would walk round the ancient vallum, he would 
search out the remaining stones among the cottages and farmsteads, 
and wonder at the ancient mechanical skill which could have moved 
such ponderous masses, and at the modern barbarism which could 
have destroyed such interesting, I might say, almost sacred, monu- 
ments of the past. From Abury he would pass on across the great 
wall of Wansdyke, which he would trace on each side of the road, 
stretching away as far as the eye could reach, and sleep at the ancient 
eity of Devizes. On Salisbury Plain he would visit Stonehenge, 
the sanctity of which is attested, not only by its own evidence, but 
by the tumuli which cluster reverently round it, and which have been 
described in the last volume of the Archologia, by Dr. Thurnam, 
whose recent death is so great a loss to science. At Old Sarum he 
will, I must be forgiven for saying, for the first time come aeross 
real and written history. Lastly, at Salisbury he will see one of 
the most beautiful of Cathedrals, and an excellent Museum which we 
owe to the liberality of Mr. Blackmore, while for the admirable 
_ arrangement we are indebted to Mr. Stevens. The question natu- 
- 
rally arises, ‘To what age do these monuments belong?” ‘‘ When 
and by whom were Stonehenge and Abury erected?” As regards 
the latter, history is entirely silent. Stonehenge, with the exception 
possibly of an allusion in Hecatzus, is unmentioned by any Greek 
or Roman writer; nor is there any reference to it in Gildas, Nennius, 
Bede, or in the Saxon Chronicle. Henry of Huntingdon, in the 
twelfth century, alludes to it with admiration, but expresses no 
