eee 
By the Rev. J. L. Ross. 153 
Stukeley remarks, that “the elegant and magnificent structure of 
Stonehenge was as the metropolitical church of the Chief Druid of 
Britain,” and that “this was the /ocus consecratus,’”’ (locus not ducus 
as some copies have it) where they met at some great festivals in 
the year, as well to perform their extraordinary sacrifices and reli- 
gious rites, as to determine causes and civil matters. ‘The very 
building of Stonehenge,” he adds, “tosay nothing of other like 
works here, shows it was not in vain, that the youth of Gaul came 
to learn of men, who could contrive and execute so mighty a work.’”! 
“This celebrated monument of antiquity,” says Clarke in his 
“Wonders of the World,’ “stands in the middle of a flat area near 
the summit of a hill, six miles distant from Salisbury. It is en- 
closed by a double circular bank and ditch, nearly thirty feet broad, 
after crossing which an ascent of thirty yards leads to the work. The 
whole fabric was originally composed of two circles and two ovals. 
The outer circle is about 108 feet in diameter, consisting, when 
entire, of sixty stones, thirty uprights, and thirty imposts, of which 
there now remain twenty-four uprights only, seventeen standing, 
and seven down, three feet and a half asunder, and eight imposts. 
Eleven uprights have their five imposts on them by the grand en- 
trance: these stones are from thirteen to twenty feet high. The 
smaller circle is somewhat more than eight feet from the inside of 
the outer one, and consisted of forty smaller stones, the highest 
measuring about six feet, nineteen only of which now remain, and 
only eleven standing. The walk between those two circles is 300 
feet in circumference. The adytum, or cell, is an oval formed of 
ten stones, from sixteen to twenty-two feet high, in pairs, and with 
imposts above thirty feet high, rising in height as they go round, 
and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair: the 
highest eight feet. Within these are nineteen other smaller single 
stones, of which six only are standing. At the upper end of the 
adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches 
thick, sixteen feet long, and four broad: it is pressed down by the 
weight of the vast stones which have fallen upon it. The whole 
number of stones, uprights and imposts, comprehending the altar, 
. ' Stukeley’ 8 ‘Stonehenge, vol. i. p. 10. 
