By William Long, Esq. 47 



restored, Lon, 1655, fol.) ; as if the rudest monuments of this 

 people were not more regular than this ; and as Aubrey well 

 observes ' while he pleases himself with retrieving a piece of archi- 

 tecture out of Vitruvius, he abuses the reader with a false scheme 

 of the whole work/ His son-in-law, [?] Charlton, {' Chorea Gigantum, 

 Lond., 1663,^ 4to.) contended for its being Danish, and came nearer 

 the probability of its being the work of some Northern people. 

 The attentive though credulous Aubrey first hit on the notion of its 

 being a Druid temple. With this notion Mr. Toland concurred, 

 and Dr. Stukeley by accurate admeasurements confirmed it 

 ('Stonehenge, 1740,-' fol.). Mr. Wood, of Bath, supported this 

 opinion, with this additional idea, that it had an astronomical as 

 well as theological use, and was, like that at Stanton Dru, in 

 Somersetshire, a temple of the moon. (* Choir Gawr, 1747,'' 8vo.) 

 This has been illustrated in a brief and comprehensive manner by 

 Dr. Smith {' Choir Gawr, the grand Orrery of the Druids. Salisb. 

 1770,' 4to.), who shews that the outer circle of 30 stones multiplied 

 by twelve within for the twelve signs of the Zodiac, represents the 

 antient solar year of 360 days ; its inner circle is the lunar month 

 of 29 days, 12 hours represented by 30 more stones, of which six 

 at the upper end of this circle exhibit the hunter's and harvest moon 

 rising six nights together with little variation. Next to this circle 

 is a great ellipse composed of seven pair of pillars with an impost 

 on each pair for the seven planets whose influence may be alluded to 

 by these compages of stones. Within these forming a concentric 

 ellipse are 12 smaller single stones for the 12 signs of the Zodiac 

 with a 13th at the upper end for the arch-druid's seat before the 

 altar. The centre of this temple Dr. Smith finds to be 51^ 11", 

 and that it could not be erected in this form in any other parallel 

 of latitude. A great stone 210 feet from the body of the structure 

 called the Friar's heel, from a vulgar tradition that the Devil threw 

 it at a friar whose heel brushed by it made an impression in it, is 

 the index that discloses these astronomical uses. Three others and 

 probably a fourth lie on the bank that surrounds the whole with 

 some variations from the cardinal points, and directly north and 

 south just within the bank is an appearance of circular holes sur- 



