222 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



ing altitude of stones, in solitary isolation on the shore. A 

 less erudite eye would have seen here nothing but a pile of 

 stones ; but the forewarned mind descried in their symme- 

 trical arrangement, ledge upon ledge, crag upon crag, the 

 rude architecture of early days ; especially when it glanced 

 at the stone-hedges and stone-cottages near at hand, which 

 assuredly luere built by human architects, and showed a less 

 symmetrical arrangement than the towering pile. Then, 

 again, the rock-basins, in which the pure water of heaven 

 was received, who could doubt that their oval form and 

 smoothly chiselled sides and bottoms, were the work of man? 

 If the cairn of stones left vague doubts, these rock-basins 

 veritably were Druidical remains ; and thus fortified against 

 scepticism, I indulged in the emotions which naturally 

 accomi:)amed the belief of being in the presence of the 

 remnants of a great human epoch long since passed away. 



Having indulged in these emotions, and extracted from 

 them all the pleasure they could yield, it was with acqui- 

 escent equanimity that I afterwards learned how little 

 probability historical scepticism allowed to these Druidical 

 remains. It appears that the cairns are simply cairns, and 

 not temples. The architecture is Nature's ; and, indeed, the 

 forms are repeated in almost every cairn along the shores. 

 Moreover, those rock-basins, which looked so convincingly 

 human in their design and execution, are proved by Science 

 to be the result of the disintegrating action of winds and 

 waters, the uniformity of the causes producing that uni- 

 formity of result which seemed the betrayal of design. 

 There is something almost pathetic in an acute and erudite 



