136 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



first, tliat Stonehenge was constructed with reference to sun worship, 

 and, secondly, that there might be some truth in the legend which 

 made it a sepulchral monument. "As regarded the date he was in- 

 clined to believe it should be resolved into two parts, and that the 

 interior oval and the interior circle were of one and the same age, 

 and were to be classed with other unhewn monuments existing in 

 various parts of the country, and that they were not in a position to 

 form any definite opinion as to their date. With reference to the 

 external circle, the stones composing which had been worked with 

 iron, he was of opinion that it must have been raised after the 

 Romans left this country. The only objection he had ever heard to 

 this view was that the chippings of the two kinds of stones had been 

 found together, but he should like to know the circumstances under 

 which they were found, because it appeared highly improbable that 

 the smaller stones were ever chipped, because they were all of granite 

 or other igneous rock, of which he understood the like was only to 

 be found in Wales or the West of Ireland. In conclusion, he said 

 when they considered that the erection of Stonehenge had left no 

 record behind it, they might naturally reflect how late in the career 

 of the human race written history entered. A large number of 

 monuments in different parts of the world, more or less analogous to 

 Stonehenge, were the only records of a vast period of unwritten 

 antiquity. In them they saw what grand conceptions, what sym- 

 metrical designs, what heavy undertakings, men were capable of 

 before they arrived at the art of even the rudest chronicling. And 

 there is nothing in the execution of those works on which investi- 

 gation had hitherto been able to fasten as a character, whereby they 

 might be arranged in a chronological scale. Those who took their 

 stand upon records and monuments made their way upwards to meet 

 those who, starting in the remote era of geologic time, were striving 

 to connect their researches with the history of man.^' 



The last opinion shall be the brief, but weighty one, of the dis- 

 tinguished writer on ethnological archaeology, Sir John Lubbock, 

 who has done so much, by his purchase at Abury, and by his speeches 

 in Parliament, to awaken, and strengthen, an interest in the pre- 

 servation of our ancient monumente. He thinks " it may be 



