THE 



WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. 



" MULT0ETT31 MANIBUS GEANDE LEVATUE ONUS." — Ovid. 



**y«tter from % gutljor of ' Jleitk ^titatmia' 

 to grdiksttoit Coxc, on t|c Diigiititl Jmgtt of 

 jstoiicjjcwjc aitb % Neighbouring §arrote," 



Communicated by H. J. F. Swayne, Esq. 



HE Rev. James Douglas, the author of the "NeniaBritannica/'' 

 never seems to have given his ideas upon Stonehenge to the 

 world. The following copy of a letter of his to Archdeacon Coxe 

 may therefore be interesting. Mr. Douglas — though what people 

 in these days would call prsescientific — was the precursor of the 

 modern school of archaeology, which so wisely depends upon the 

 spade. 



H. J. F. S. 



" Martin, in his ' Religion des Gauls/ says that stone monuments are more 

 certain guides than historians, and he says right. I place this remark at the 

 head of your query. Josephus mentions the earliest stone pillars, as erected by 

 Seth, which he says were to be seen in the time of Vespasian ; but this is doubted 

 by Stillingfleet (Origines Sacrse, Lib. I., cap. 2). In I. Samuel, vi., 18, a stone is 

 mentioned by the name of Abel, but which, from the marginal reference of the 

 Bible, should be read Aben, a stone made a boundary for the country of the 

 Philistines, ' whereon they set down the ark of the Lord in the field of Joshua,' 

 which stone, according to Holy Writ, appears to have been the identical stone 

 which Joshua raised as a religious memorial, and to which he called the tribes 

 Sichem, in imitation of the one erected by Jacob at Bethel (Joshua, xxiv., 26). 

 These were the earliest stones we read of as simple though magnificent memorials 

 of the one and only true God ; but afterwards under various similitudes perverted 

 by Gentile superstition, and therefore forbidden by the law (Levit., xxvi., 1), 

 VOL. XX. NO. LX. R 



