WORLE CAMP.’ 65 
bands of priests and monks, and hear the solemn chant and 
pealing anthem, while the bishop or mitred abbot presides 
at the celebration of some magnificent office of religion ? 
Indeed, while fierce wars and faithful loves—while the 
remembrance ‚of all that is exciting ard pieturesque in 
history and romance,—are interesting; while reverence for 
things holy, and admiration for things beautiful, survive, 
the stately castle, the solemn minster, aud the ruined abbey, 
cannot fail of obtaining that attention, ‘rhich except by 
the most obtuse dullness, or the most egregious bad taste, 
could never have been denied them. But there are other 
remains of by-gone days, more ancient and more myste- 
rious than these, compared to which the Norman castle, 
the cathedral, and the abbey, are things of yesterday, 
their inhabitants as men of modern days, and their uses 
and origin plain and wellknown. These remains have not 
the charm of architectural beauty, nor the associations of 
chivalry, to recommend them to our notice. No common 
ties of religion exist between us and those who raised 
those earthworks, which we see on the barren down or the 
bleak hill. And yet to one who, like Wordsworth’s tra- 
veller, has seen the hills grow b.gger in the darkness, these 
monuments of nations whose political existence closed 
when the written history of this country began, possess 
a fascination little, if at all, inferior to those of later days; 
and their extreme antiquity, and the mystery attached to 
them, fully make up for the want of those charms which 
draw the attention so foreibly to the remains of medisval 
structures, whether military or ecclesiastical. 
On Worle Hill, to the north of the town of Weston-Super- 
Mare, exists one of the most remarkable and mysterious 
of these relics of antiquity that I have anywhere seen ; 
to describe which, and, if possible, to shew what it 
1851, PART 11. | I 
