By William Long, Esq. 97 



but the Caledonian Wall of the Romans has received but scanty- 

 mention from their own historians; and the meg'alithic works in Gaul 

 are jjassed over by them in silence as complete as those in our own 

 island. To the writer, the best reason for the absence of any notice 

 of Stonehenge by the Romans, is this; that to any educated Roman 

 who was familiar with the grand and magnificent works of Rome 

 and the neiglibourhood, under the late Republic and early Empire, 

 such a work would appear to be rude in form, puny in effect, and 

 scarcely worthy of any special notice. To Mr. Herbert, however, the 

 rudeness and uncouthness of the Stonehenge structure would cause 

 it to have an especial claim upon the attention of the Romans ; 

 " Nothing could be more new and admirable to the eyes of a Greek 

 or Roman than the sight of structures, so rude and uncouth, and yet 

 so stupendous." ^ 



Mr. Herbert's theory, as propounded in his "Cyclops Chrisfcianus" 

 (1849), is that on the lapse of the Britons into a kind of heathenism 

 after the Romans had left Britain, " groves of upright stones were 

 substituted by them for the oak-groves of obsolete Druidism (as 

 Carnac was a grove of the Armorican Britons after Christianity 

 and the rows of stones their walks of sacred groves) ; that when 

 Britain became free from Roman rule, Ambresbury appears to have 

 been the place to which the national councils were summoned by the 

 king, where the independence of the island was celebrated by joyous 

 festivities, and where the rites and orgies of its fanatics were solem- 

 nized. There kings were elected, anointed, and crowned; and there 

 also buried." But it may be asked whether the Romano-British, 

 after the departure of the Romans, had ever a period of sufficient 



should most certainly expect it. In the Archives of Barcelona there is no trace 

 of the triumphant entrance received by Columbus there. In Alarco Polo there 

 is no mention of the Chinese wall. And in the Archives of Portugal there is 

 nothing about the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in the service of tliat crown." 

 Dr. Luthardt's " St. John the author of the Foixrth Gospel," 1875. 



' Mr. Rickman, in " Archeeologia," vol. xxviii, p. 41 1, considered that Aburv 

 was constructed " not earlier than the third century of the Christian ajra, and 

 that the more difficult operations requisite for the formation of Stonehenge may 

 be assigned to the next century, or, (to speak with due caution) that this temple 

 was completed before the final departure of the Romans from Britain," 

 VOL. XVI. NO. XLYI. H 



