By William Long, Esq. 77 



a regular onslaught upon buildings of this description took place, 

 equal to the frenzied assaults of the Scotch Covenanters upon the 

 cathedrals . . . The Saxons remained pagans about one hundred 

 and fifty years, until the arrival of St. Augustine, in 517. What 

 happened to the Druidical worship during that period, we know not; 

 but we cannot suppose it to have revived, even if any Britons had 

 remained to revive it, under the desolation of the Saxon domination, 

 and in defiance of their hostile creed. It seems however likely that 

 the first steps of the British converts to Christianity would have been 

 directed against the symbols of Druidical superstition. We have no 

 record to establish the fact, but what is more likely than that 

 Stonehenge, like similar edifices elsewhere, should have been one of 

 the first objects to experience the wrath of the proselytes against the 

 previous objects of their worship ? The partial overthrow of Stone- 

 henge may, perhaps, be referred to some such religious movement, 

 and to about the fourth century of our era.'' 



But for the watchful care of Mr. Henry Browne, who, for so 

 many years, took a loving interest in Stonehenge, and who, ''on many 

 occasions, has succeeded in arresting the ravages (worse than those 

 of time) which ruthless hands would have committed,'' much more 

 injury would probably have been done during a considerable portion 

 of the present centuiy. In his little book on Stonehenge (p. 19), 

 he " exhorts his readers to the respect and veneration justly due to 

 such unparalleled curiosities, and most earnestly entreats them not 

 to contribute to their demolition by taking those chippings of them 

 which the unheeding shepherds of the plain will be ready to provide 

 them with for the consideration of a few half-pence, but rather to 

 become the protectors of them by discouraging every kind of attempt 

 to injure or mutilate them." ^ 



* No paper on Stonehenge could, with justice, omit to make mention of Mr. 

 H. Browne, who, for so many years, was the self-constituted curator of Stone- 

 henge, and, who hy his constant watchfulness over this object of his interest 

 and affection, must have preserved it from much injury and mutilation. Sir 

 R. C. Hoare in his " Modern Wilts," (Hundred of Amesbury, p. 52,) says of 

 him that "no one has investigated Stonehenge so minutely as he has, and, by 

 ascending to the summit of the trilithons, he has discovered what was before 

 nnnotioed, viz., that each stone was fixed to the other by a groove. He also 



