RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. <> 



ineradicable instinct of man's nature which leads him in so 

 many various ways to attempt conciliating the Powers of ano- 

 ther world, serves greatly to heighten their effect History 

 at the time of their erection had no existence in these islands : 

 the age, though it sought, through the medium of strange, 

 unknown rites, to communicate with Heaven, was not know- 

 ing enough to communicate, through the medium of alpha- 

 bet or symbol, with posterity. The appearance of the obe- 

 lisks, too, harmonizes well with their great antiquity and the 

 obscurity of their origin. For about a man's height from the 

 ground they are covered thick by the shorter lichens, chief- 

 ly the gray-stone parmelia, here and there embroidered by 

 golden-hued patches of the yellow parmelia of the wall ; but 

 their heads and shoulders, raised beyond the reach alike of 

 the herd-boy and of his herd, are covered by an extraordi- 

 nary profusion of a flowing beard-like lichen of unusual length, 

 the lichen calicarus (or, according to modern botanists, 

 Ramalina scopulorum), in which they look like an assem- 

 blage of ancient Druids, mysteriously stern and invincibly 

 silent and shaggy as the bard of Gray, when 



" Loose his beard and hoary hair 



Streamed like a meteor on the troubled air." 



The day was perhaps too sunny and clear for seeing the 

 Standing Stones to the best possible advantaga They could 

 not be better placed than on their flat promontories, surround- 

 ed by the broad plane of an extensive lake, in a waste, lonely, 

 treeless country, that presents no bold competing features to 

 divert attention from them as the great central objects of the 

 landscape; but the gray of the morning, or an atmosphere of 

 fog and vapour, would have associated better with the misty 

 obscurity of their history, their shaggy forms, and their livid 

 tints, than the glare of a cloudless sun, that brought out in 

 hard, clear relief their rude outlines, and gave to each its 

 sharp dark patch of shadow. Gray-coloured objects, when 



