244 A Review of " Pre-lristoric England" 



" geologically impossible that the material should have come from 

 any Wiltshire quarry ; that the " builders of Avebury were in 

 possession of some secret now lost, as to its source. " If any one 

 could, in sober sadness, believe that every sarsen stone now to be 

 seen in Wiltshire, and every sarsen stone which has been destroyed 

 or covered over in the same district, had been brought thither "from 

 a site so distant as to be problematical," he might well agree with 

 the writer, that the " works of the early British builders are not 

 merely remarkable but wonderful, not only as efforts of strength, 

 but also as proofs of skill, of forethought, and of extraordinary 

 command of labour." 



It is sad to think that arehseologists of a past generation, such, 

 as Sir Richard Colt Hoare and Mr. Cunnington, should have passed 

 away before they could learn the truth respecting the foreign 

 origin of the sarsen stones with which they were so familiar ; and 

 it is also a grievous reproach under which our Bucklands, our 

 Smiths, our Cunningtons, and Prestwiches must lie, that they 

 not only have never discovered the quarries " in a distant site " 

 from whence these stones were brought, but that they have actually 

 been hitherto in ignorance that the stones had been " transported" 

 to the Downs of Wilts. 



Our " British Quarterly " reviewer having imported his stones, 

 (would that he could tell us whence!) proceeds to "work" them. 

 But he should have been content with the unmistakable " masonic 

 character" of Stonehenge, and not have hazarded such a sentence 

 as the following, " the principal stones at Avebury impress the 

 observer with the idea that they have once been carefully wrought." 

 He goes on, indeed, to say "It is possible that this idea is erroneous." 

 If archaeology and archaeologists are, at some future period, to 

 become objects of ridicule, it will be by the treatment of subjects 

 such as this, in the manner adopted by the writer of " Prehistoric 

 England." Nothing can be more reckless than such a statement 

 as that he has made respecting the impression to be derived by an 

 observer of the careful working of the stones at Abury. It may 

 be safely asserted that there is not a single stone now visible at 

 Abury which could convey any such impression to a person of 



