By William Long, Esq. 2:il 



drawn away to defend other Provinces, their own country lay open 

 to the Incursion of the Invaders : In that miserable state of things, 

 the Learned Men fled for Refuge into Ireland; upon which occasion 

 Learning did flourish there a long time ; but the Memory of things 

 here became obliterated. Books perish'd, and Tradition was forgot. 

 The Saxon, Conquerors ascribed Works great and strange to the 

 Devil, or some Giants, and handed down to us only Fables. This 

 Incursion of the Goths puts Monsieur Balzac into a Cholerique 

 Rhetorication. Sc. Toutee qni s'escrit mesme, nes pas assure de de- 

 meurer, B" les Liures perlssenl, conime la Tradition s'oubUe. Le 

 temps qui vient a bout du fer & des marhres, ne manque pas de force 

 contra des matieres plus frag des : & les Feuples du Septentrion, qui 

 sembloient estre venus pour haster le Temps, & pour precipiter le fin 

 du Monde, declarerent une guerre si particulariere aux chosses escrites, 

 qui n'a pas tenu a eux que I' Alphabet mesme ne soil abolj/. ' The 

 Northern People who seemed to come to hasten Time, and precipitate 

 the end of the World, declared so particular a War to written things, 

 that it was not wanting in them, but that even the Alphabet had 

 been abolished.-' ^Twas in that Deluge of History, the Account of 

 these British Monuments utterly perished ; the Discovery whereof 

 I do here endeavour (for want of written Record) to work out and 

 restore after a kind of Algebraical Method, by comparing them that 

 I have seen, one with another, and reducing them to a kind of Equa- 

 tion : so (being but an ill Orator my self) to make the Stones give 

 Evidence for themselves. 



" I shall proceed gradually, a notioribus ad minus nota; that is to 

 say, from the Remains of Antiquity less imperfect, to the more im- 

 perfect and ruinated ; wherefore I must first touch at that vast and 

 ancient Monument called Aubury, in Wiltshu-e. 



" AVBDRY. 



" Avbiiry is Four Miles West from Marlborough in Wiltshire, aridi 

 is peradventure the most eminent and most entire Monument of this 

 this kind in the Isle of Great Britain. It is very strange, that so 

 eminent an Antiquity should lie so long unregarded by our Choro- 

 graphers. Mr. Camden only names it. 



