expanse--Stonehenge and the barrows, which rose like green bosses about
the plain, and a few hay ricks. On the top of a mountain the old temple
would not be more impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with their
flocks sprinkled the plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It looked
as if the wide margin given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple
were accorded by the veneration of the British race to the old egg out
of which all their ecclesiastical structures and history had proceeded.

Stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet,
and enclosing a second and third colonnade within. We walked round the
stones, and clambered over them, to wont ourselves with their strange
aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered from the wind among
them, where C. [Footnote: Thomas Carlyle, the author of "Sartor
Resartus," etc., etc.] lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see that
just this simplest of all simple structures--two upright stones and a
lintel laid across--had long outstood all later churches, and all
history, and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet:
these, and the barrows--(mere mounds of which there are a hundred and
sixty within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge)--like the same
mound on the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the passing
mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles.
Within the enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild
thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, thistle, and the carpeting grass.
Over us, larks were soaring and singing--as my friend said: "the larks
which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched many
thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest
stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the
inscrutable temple. There are ninety-four stones, and there were once
probably one hundred and sixty. The temple is circular and uncovered,
and the situation fixt astronomically--the grand entrances here, and at