5852.] Northern Antiquities, 139 



East, of what nature or amount cannot be determined — the cross gives 

 them the only claim to an origin within the Christian sera, and then 

 this is destroyed by the absence of all the usual crucifixion peculiari- 

 ties of the symbol, as used by Christians, while the embellishment of 

 the cross was frequently to be met with before the introduction of 

 Christianity. 



It is quite clear, from the conflicts betwixt the earliest historians, 

 quoted by Mr. Chalmers, that by the Fourteenth Century, tradition 

 itself was silent regarding them, and that the stories, such as the stones 

 themselves suggested, were manufactured, accepted, and circulated to 

 suit the fancy or the occasion, and the other fact of their being found 

 as building stones in our very oldest edifices shows them to have 

 fallen into neglect still earlier than this. Yet it is impossible to sup- 

 pose that in these rude and remote ages so large a number of monu- 

 ments so elaborate could have come into existence without some strong 

 special reason, widely recognised, and of the most powerful influence 

 amongst the people. 



And this once more carries us deep into the recesses of the dark 

 ages, extending back far beyond the Roman Conquest, during which 

 a barbarity prevailed over the western parts of Europe, barren alike 

 in tradition, literature, monuments and architecture, and sends us to 

 seek for the origin of our sculpture to periods long antecedent to these, 

 when the Cromleche and the rocking-stone, the unhewn pillar, the 

 rude block and shapeless cairn, were all that were aspired after for 

 religious or monumental purposes — as far back beyond the ages of 

 those we call the aborigines of Britain, as the Pyramids and sculp- 

 tured stones of Yutacan, precede the days of the red men, Cortez 

 found peopling America. 



