THE 



WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. 



"MULTOBUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATITE ONUS." — Ovid. 



*'^dkx from i\t ^utljor of 'Ip^ma ^ritaimia' 

 to ^rcljkiicoit €jnt, u tlje ©riguml J^^ijii of 

 cStoitcIjcuKe u\ % |teigPomiitg §aiTote/' 



Communicated by H. J. F. Swayne, Esq. 



I^HE Kev. James Douglas, the author of the ^^NeniaBritannicaj" 

 ^i never seems to have given his ideas upon Stonehenge to the 

 world. The following copy of a letter of his to Archdeacon Coxe 

 may therefore be interesting. Mr. Douglas — though what people 

 in these days would call prsescientific — was the precursor of the 

 modern school of archaeology, which so wisely depends upon the 

 spade. 



H. J. F. S. 



" Martin, in his ' Religion des Gavils,' says that stone monuments are more 

 certain guides than historians, and he says right. I place this remark at the 

 head of your query. Josephus mentions the earliest stone pillars, as erected by 

 Seth, which he says were to be seen in the time of Vespasian ; but this is doubted 

 by Stillingfleet (Origines Sacrte, Lib. I., cap. 2). In I. Samuel, vi., 18, a stone is 

 mentioned by the name of Abel, but which, from the marginal reference of the 

 Bible, should be read Ahen, a stone made a boundary for the country of the 

 Philistines, ' whereon they set down the ark of the Lord in the field of Joshua,' 

 which stone, according to Holy Writ, appears to have been the identical stone 

 which Joshua raised as a religious memorial, and to which he called the tribes 

 Sichem, in imitation of the one erected by Jacob at Bethel (Joshua, xxiv., 26). 

 These were the earliest stones we read of as simple though magnificent memorials 

 of the one and only true God ; but afterwards iinder various similitudes perverted 

 by Gentile superstition, and therefore forbidden by the law (Levit., xxvi., 1), 

 VOL. XX. — NO. LX. R 



