178 RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 



century, began their meetings, in 1708, in the Young Denl Tavern, 

 Fleet Street, London ; and established a society for the study of 

 antiquities, which has since rendered valuable service to letters and 

 national history. It was not, however, till 1718, that they were 

 thoroughly organised, with a staff of of&ce-bearers, and a regular record 

 of their proceedings. But from this we learn that their first President 

 was Peter Le Neve, Esq., Norroy King-at-Arms, and their first Secre- 

 tary Dr. William Stukeley, a fitting type of the antiquarian enthusiast 

 of that eighteenth century. He was still a layman, a Fellow of the 

 College of Physicians, devoted to the study of the natural sciences, a 

 zealous botanist, an ingenious experimenter in chemistry, and an 

 active cooperator in many curious anatomical dissections, with Stephen 

 Hales, a fellow member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 



Dr. Stukeley settled' in his native county of Lincolnshire as a 

 medical practitioner, and acquired considerable professional reputation. 

 But soon after he reached his fortieth year, his own health began to 

 fail ; and, on the persuasion, it is said, of Archbishop Wake, he aban- 

 doned the medical profession and took orders. Soon after, in 1729, he 

 was presented, by the Lord Chancellor King, to the living of All Saints, 

 in Stamford; and thenceforth he devoted his leisure to the gratification 

 of his favourite taste for antiquarian research. Much of his spare time 

 had been given to such studies even in earlier years, when his profes- 

 sional training, and the bent of his friend Hales' tastes, tempted him 

 in other directions. So early as 1720, he published ''An Account of 

 a Roman Temple, and other Antiquities near Graham's Dike, in Scot- 

 land :" said " Roman Temple" being the famous Arthur's Oon, a 

 singular bee-hive structure of squared masonry, twenty-eight feet in 

 diameter, and with all its characteristics pointing to a very difierent 

 age than that in which Roman temples were reared. A hint of the 

 Scottish historian George Buchanan, sufficed for the theory that it was 

 the Teonplum Termini, a sacellum reared on the limits of Roman rule. 

 Dr. Stukeley giving his imagination full play, conceived of it as the 

 work of Agricola, and dedicated to Romulus, the parent deity of Rome ; 

 and in his enthusiasm pronounced it to be a fae simile of " the famous 

 Pantheon at Rome, before the noble portico was added to it by Marcus 

 Agrippa." Other works followed in the same vein, dealing with Stone- 

 henge, Abury, the Druids, and British antiquities in general. He 

 could use his pencil, as well as his pen, with facility j and grudged no 

 outlay in the issue of copiously illustrated folios and quartos, according 



