LECT. vi.] ADDRESS. 175 



There are still many who go abroad to visit distant 

 antiquities, neglecting those at home, like the " Wander 

 Witt of Wiltshire," mentioned by Gibbons in 1670, who, 

 having "screwed" himself into the company of some 

 Eoman antiquaries, confessed that he had never seen 

 Stonage, as he calls it, " whereupon they kicked him out 

 of doors, and bade him goe home and see Stonage ; and I 

 wish," adds Gibbons, " all such ^Esopicall cocks, as slight 

 these admired stones, and other our domestick monu- 

 ments (by which they might be admonished to eschew 

 some evil, and doe some good,) and scrape for barley 

 cornes'of vanity out of forreigne dunghills, might be 

 handled, or rather footed, as he was." 



Indeed, it would be difficult to find a pleasanter or 

 more instructive tour. The visitor would begin, perhaps, 

 with Marlborough, pass the large Castle Mound, and 

 coming soon within sight of the grand hill of Silbury, 

 leave the high road and drive, partly up the ancient 

 roadway, into the venerable circle of Abury, perhaps the 

 most interesting of our great national monuments. 



There he would walk round the ancient vallum, he 

 would search out the remaining stones among the cot- 

 tages and farmsteads, and wonder at the mechanical skill 

 which could have moved such ponderous masses ; and 

 at the modern barbarism which could have destroyed 

 such interesting, I might almost say sacred, monuments 

 of the past. 



From Abury he would pass on across the great wall 

 of Wansdyke, which he would trace on each side of the 

 road, stretching away as far as the eye could reach, and 

 he would sleep at the ancient city of the Devizes. 



On Salisbury Plain he would visit Stonehenge, the 



