269 



! Stonehenge and its Earthworks, with Plans and Illustrations by 

 Edgar Barclay, E.P.E. Cr. 4to. London, 1895. Price to subscribers, 

 : 10s. 6d. 



Of books dealing with the problem of Stonehenge there is no end. The 

 author of the newest " Bolt shot at Stonage " says in his preface that his 

 « " book undertakes to give a sufficing account of Stonehenge, and to be as well 

 a book of reference to the literature of the subject which, excepting small 

 handbooks, is inaccessible to the general public." The author is an artist of 

 no meau capacity, and he gives us many very charming views of Harvest at 

 Stonehenge, Amesbury Church, and go on, reproduced from pictures of his own j 

 which, if they do not directly illustrate the subject in hand, at least help to 

 embellish a book which, lavishly illustrated as it is with plans, diagrams, and 

 reproductions of old engravings * and modern drawings, has on the face of it, 

 > with its excellent paper and print, and sumptuous margins, a very prepossessing 

 appearance. But the author is also a mathematician, and the fascination of 

 figures is upon him, and by an extremely elaborate series of measurements and 

 calculations he proceeds to build up, step by step, an argument which, to his 

 own satisfaction, not only accounts for the position of every stone in the 

 , structure, but fixes the date of its construction within very narrow limits. In 

 i his view every portion of the structure is symbolical, and the key to its solution 

 ; is found in the fact that the whole of the salient measurements of every part 

 of it, sarsen and blue stone alike, are deducible from the proportions of a base 

 j triangle, which are themselves due to an observation of the sun. The agreement 

 ! of every portion more or less nearly in these measurements proves, in his view, 

 that the whole was erected at the same time. The horseshoe is the crescent of 

 the moon, and the circle the disc of the full moon. The thirty piers of the 

 outer circle are the thirty days of the lunar month. The shadow of the sun 

 stone pointing at the summer solstice between the horns of the horseshoe or 

 : crescent typifies the marriage of the earth with the sun. The blue stone circle, 

 — which he holds is nearly complete as it stands — typifies by its pairs of stones 

 the planetary deities with whose memory the seven days of the week are 

 i connected, and thus fixes the date of their erection as later than the conquest 

 of Egypt by Rome, because the week of seven days was only then introduced 

 into Western Europe. Again, starting from the assumption that the opening 

 of the central trilithon, towards which the sun points over the Friar's Heel, or 

 "Sun Stone," at Midsummer, argues the existence of a great Midsummer 

 festival, he satisfies himself that the other four trilithons also point to great 

 festivals and settles their dates on the 1st of May, the end of August, the end 



* An interesting copy is given of a drawing from a MS. in the British Museum, 

 proving that the fall of the fifth trilithon took place before 1574. 



