Details of an Address by Br. Phene at Stonehenge. £49 



have existed on this spot. They were clearly not wrought with such 

 tools as the larger stones were wrought with, and the objects of the 

 constructors with the larger stones would certainly not be to seek 

 the remote districts of our mountain-ranges for small ones, when 

 large ones were within reach, and it was with large ones they were 

 dealing. 



Referring to the grander edifice first, and avoiding the strange 

 suggestion of Inigo Jones that this was a Roman Doric temple, it 

 will be well to remember that the Romans were at least great copy- 

 ists, they were not inventors in construction, save in brick-work, 

 but in architecture borrowed, most cleverly adapted, and often 

 amalgamated, the ideas of the nations they conquered. 



We cannot doubt that we stand in a great temple. Admit that, 

 and you see a rude outline of the Pantheon and the temple of Vesta 

 at Rome, or the temple of the winds and the choragic monument of 

 Lysicrates at Athens. Nay, the mind wanders on to Santa Sophia, 

 to many a Mahomedan mosque with a circular support as well as 

 dome; to the most sacred temples of India, China, and even of 

 Mexico ; and to the Renaissance of the same idea in the Churches 

 of the Templars. 



There must have been ancient examples of circular temples from 

 which the Greeks and Romans copied. 



But if no such examples had been known before, the Romans 

 would have found them abundantly in Britain. 



In this neighbourhood it is only necessary to instance what appears 

 to me the much older structure of Avebury, a temple too that 

 answers to the ancient description of the circular temple of the 

 Hyperboreans, even more closely than Stonehenge, and where dis- 

 tinct audiences to the performances described could be gathered 

 within the circle of the temple. The position and working of the stones 

 forming the impost of the great circle at Stonehenge, I take to be so 

 entirely Roman that it is easy to see how they misled Inigo Jones. 



But in my address at Devizes I mentioned that in my recent ex- 

 aminations of monuments in the Mediterranean islands I found 

 similar lithic arrangements still existing in some of them, notably 

 in that of Minorca. Not only are there circular walls, enclosing 



