124 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



great fountain of all idolatry in the four quarters of the glohe was 

 the veneration paid by men to the sun : it is no more than an ex- 

 aggeration to say, with Mr. Helps, of the sun-worship in Peru, that 

 it was inevitable. Sun worship is by no means universal among the 

 lower races of mankind, but manifests itself in the upper levels of 

 savage religion in districts far and wide over the earth, often assuming 

 the prominence which it keeps and develops in the faiths of the 

 barbaric world. Why some races are sun- worshippers and others 

 not, is indeed too hard a question to answer in general terms. Yet 

 one important reason is obvious, that the sun is not so evidently the 

 god of wild hunters and fishers, as of the tillers of the soil, who 

 watch him day by day, giving or taking away their wealth and their 

 very life. On the geographical significance of sun-worship, D^Orbigny 

 has made a remark, suggestive if not altogether sound, connecting 

 the worship of the sun not so much with the torrid regions where 

 his glaring heat oppresses man all day long, and drives him to the 

 shade for refuge, as with climates where his presence is welcomed 

 for its life-giving heat, and nature chills at his departure." ' 



> Tylor's Primitive Culture, ii., p. 260. Most of us, doubtless, are acquainted 

 with Souther's sonnet : — 



" I marvel not, O Sun ! that unto Thee 

 In adoration man should bow the knee, 

 And pour his prayer of mingled awe and love ; 

 For like a God thou ait, and on thy way 

 Of glory sheddest with benignant ray, 

 Beauty, aud life, and joyance from above. 

 No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud, 

 These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day; 

 But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud 

 And cheer the earth once more. The languid flowers 

 Lie sceniless, beaten down with heavy rain ; 

 Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers; 

 O Lord of Light! put forth thy beams again 

 For damp and cheerless are the gloomy hours." 



The most eloquent writer of English in modern times, says : " It may 

 te easy to prove that the ascent of Apollo in bis chariot signifies nothing 

 but the rising of the sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify to 

 us ? If only languid return to frivolous amusement, or fruitless labour, it willi 

 indeed, not be easy for us to conceive the power, over a Greek, of the name of 

 Apollo. But if, for us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restora- 

 tion to the sense of passionate gladness and of perfect Ufe — if it means the 

 thrilling of new strength through every nerve, — the shedding over us a better 

 peace than the peace of night, in the power of the dawn, — and the purging of 



