So similar in their general style and character are the remains of the Druid Circle-Temples that a minute description of more than the two representative specimens of Abury and Stonehenge would be tedious to the reader. The former serves as a fair example of the earlier, and the latter of the later, period of Druidism; the reader must, however, understand that these two grand old Druid groups have no counterparts in extent, or in the number and magnitude of their stones, within the region comprised in old Britain,

and but one elsewhere that I am aware of, and that not a "circle," that of Carnac, on the oppo

WAYLAND SMITH.

HUGH LLOYD'S PULPIT.

| site shores of Brittany, of which Mrs. Stothard, in her "Tour in Normandy and Brittany," speaks thus: "Carnac is infinitely more extensive than Stonehenge, but of ruder formation; the stones are much broken, fallen down, and displaced; they consist of eleven rows of unwrought pieces of rock or stone, merely set up on end in the earth, without any pieces crossing them at top. stones are of great thickness, but not exceeding nine or twelve feet in height; there may be some few fifteen feet. The rows are placed from fifteen to eighteen paces from each other, extending in length (taking rather a semi-circular direction) rather above half a mile, on unequal ground, and towards one end upon a hilly site. . . . It is said that there are above four thousand stones now remaining." Carnac does not lie within Engla-land, and therefore does not come within my scope beyond this passing notice.

I have above spoken of Abury as belonging to the earlier period of Druidism, but there are some remains of Druidic circles which, from their ruder construction and smaller dimensions, are judged

to belong to a still more remote day. Of these, one in Oxfordshire, about three miles northwest of Chipping-Norton, is shown in a small engraving on page 61; the stones are small, the highest five feet high, and the circle arranged with less care than is evident in other like remains. Camden has sought to show that this circle belongs to a much later date, and was erected to commemorate a Danish victory; but few adopt this view; it is generally regarded as belonging to the very earliest age of Britain. About seven miles south of Bristol, in the small parish of Stanton Drew, there are a number of very peculiar stones, which are supposed to have formed part of a vast temple consisting of a large and two smaller circles; Dr. Stukeley claims that these ruins belong to the remotest antiquity, far antedating that of Abury. There is no indication now of the circles, and it requires much antiquarian faith to believe they ever existed, the stones being scattered about over the place absolutely without order; the accompanying engraving (page 59), shows the larger and more remarkable stones, the largest of them being much inferior in size to the huge masses of Stonehenge. Edward King, the learned English antiquary, says of the stones of Stanton Drew: "There are stones cautiously placed nearly on each side of the meridiar, two at the one end for a sort of observer's index, and two at the other, as if designed for leading sites to direct the eye to certain points in the heavens, equally distant, a little to the east and west of the south; and so in like manner, two to the east, and one on the west side for an index, as if to observe the rising of certain stars and planets."

The tradition of the neighboring peasantry is nearly as authentic as the dreams of the scientists; the traditional name for the group is "The Wedding," and the traditional account of its origin is that "as a bride and bridegroom were proceeding to their espousals, surrounded by pipers and dancers, the entire party were suddenly transformed into stone"-tradition tells us not for what crime this hard penalty was inflicted. The people of the vicinity hold that it is wicked and dangerous to attempt to count the stones of Stanton Drew. The name, "Stanton Drew," is said to signify "the stone town of the Druids." About all that can certainly be affirmed of this collection of stones is that they were evidently brought hither at the most remote period of Britain, but

when and for what purpose is and must ever remain unknown, notwithstanding the learned assure us to the contrary.

Before dismissing the Druid Circles, I yield to inclination by indulging a few reflections suggested partly by the similarity I have remarked upon in these wonderful monuments of a wonderful people, and partly by the fact, also before alluded to, of this class of structures being found in so many and such distant regions.

This wonderful uniformity of style proves a uniformity of design in the construction of these old circles, and this uniformity of style and design affords the strongest testimony possible, I conceive, that their form was symbolic of the faith and worship of the Druids. They may have served, and doubtless they did serve, as some have affirmed, for assemblies for judicial and other civic purposes-they may have been what Icelandic writers call "Doom Rings," t. e. Circles of Judgment; but whatever else they were, they were, beyond fair cavil, temples for the worship of the strange old Druids. The form points, too, conclusively to the ancient worship of the heavenly bodies, especially the sun, symbolized in the circle, while the serpentine line of Abury also tells us in symbolic language of the serpent-worship of old Britain. These vast monuments tell us more of the Druidic Britons themselves than the careless beholder sees; they were an imaginative and a devout people, not placing the chief end of existence in the consumption of the fruits of the earth, but believing in spiritual relations and future existence. Confused as was their better faith with gross superstitions, and obscure as were their conceptions of the life beyond death, there was much to admire and to excite our wonder in their near approach in many points to Scriptural views, and still more to commend, while we marvel at the fact, in the spirit of self-devotion and the deep religious fervor which pervaded their lives-their religion doubtless abounded in forms and ceremonial observances which were worse than useless, but it was not a mere formal and conventional pretence; it was a lively principle operating upon their actions. Seneca's nephew, the great Roman epic poet of the first Christian century, Lucan, in his immortal "Pharsalia," recognizes this characteristic of the Druidic religion in the well-known lines commencing with "Et vos, barbaricos;" I quote from Kennett's rendering, as given in Camden's "Brit

of the Indian Archipelago and of the South Sea." Now, what can we infer from the fact that monuments, identical with those in Britain and Gaul recognized as having been erected by the Druids, are found in countries so far asunder, between which it is impossible to trace, after the dispersion recorded in the Scriptures, any ancient intercommunication such as would account for their similarity of construction? Is there any more reasonable conclusion than that the ideas which underlie them and give them character prevailed among men before the confusion of tongues divided the great family of man into families (Genesis 11: I to 9)? But of this more in a future paper. Let us return to our view of the ancient memorials.

Besides the circles, there are other remarkable remains of old Engla-land as certainly belonging to the same early times. Some of these I have noticed briefly, as the cromlechs, the ConstantineTolman, etc. There is, however, a singular structure near Maidstone, in Kent, which is surpassed in interest by no other memorial of the prehistoric age, in Britain. The small engraving on page 61 shows the reader that Kit's Coty House resembles while it differst materially from the cromlechs; indeed, there is no structure precisely like it in Europe. The purpose for which it was originally designed has been the subject of many learned treatises and of extended discussion by scholars and antiquaries for centuries past, and I confess I am unwilling even to hazard an opinion upon the question.

John Stow,' nearly three centuries ago, wrote: "I have myself, in company with divers worshipful and learned gentlemen, beheld it in anno 1590, and it is of four flat stones, one of them standing upright in the middle of two others, inclosing the edge sides of the first, and the fourth laid flat across the other three, and is of such height that men may stand on either side the middle stone in time of storm or tempest safe from wind and rain,

1 Stow, whose name now stands in the front rank of pro

being defended with the breadth of the stones, having one at their backs on either side, and the fourth over their heads." He adds: "About a coit's cast from this monument lieth another great stone, much part thereof in the ground, as fallen down where the same had been affixed." In 1773, a Mr. Colebrooke described the Coty House, and spoke of this separate stone as half-buried, and it has since entirely disappeared. Francis Grose, in his "Antiquities of England and Wales" (1787), gives the dimensions of Kit's Coty House as follows: "Upright stone on the N. or N. W. side, eight feet high, eight feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight eight tons and a half. Upright stone on the S. or S. E. side, eight feet high, seven and a half feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight eight tons. Upright stone between these, very irregular; medium dimensions, five feet high, five feet broad, fourteen inches lhick; estimated weight about two tons. Upper stone, very irregular; eleven fect long, eight feet broad, two feet thick; estimated weight about ten tons seven cwt." Holland, the first translator of Camden, gives a description of this monument, with his notion of its original purpose (in this he followed Camden): "Catigern, honored with a stately and solemn funeral, is thought to have been interred near unto Aylesford, where under the side of a hill, I saw four huge, rude, hard stones erected, two for the sides, one transversal in the middest between them, and the hugest of all, piled and laid over them in manner of the British monument which is called Stonehenge, but not so artificially with mortice and tenants." Holland refers to the tradition that a great battle was fought at Aylesford, between the Britons, commanded by Catigern, the brother of Vortimer, and the Saxon invaders under Hengist and Horsa; in this battle the Saxons were routed, but Catigern, the British leader, fell.

a monument was erected to his memory, and it still remains. Maitland has recorded that the bones of the old antiquary were removed from their resting-place in 1732 to make way for those of some richer person.

said) and returning from the chace, erected to the memory of Catigern (as I suppose) that monument of four huge and hard stones, which are yet standing in this parish, pitched upright in the ground, covered after the manner of Stonage (that famous sepulchre of the Britons upon Salisbury Plain), and now termed of the common people here Citscotehouse." But Lambarde has been

64

generally judged to have been mistaken in regarding Stonage" (Stonehenge) as a "sepulchre of the Britons," and possibly he was as wide of the truth in respect to "Citscotehouse." The name, Kit's Coty House, has puzzled the antiquarians and occasioned no little guessing. The name is comparatively modern and may have come from the tomb notion of Lambarde; according to Grose, "Kit," is a corruption of "Catigern," "Coty" is Coity (coit being a large flat stone)-so that "Kit's Coty House" is "Catigern's House of Stones." Admitting this derivation and definition of the name, it proves nothing as to the Catigern theory, while there is a chronological difficulty in connecting the monument with Catigern, who fell about 450 to 455 A.D., while there is very strong reasons for believing that the structure belongs to a time centuries earlier; the fact that in Palestine, and elsewhere far away from Kent, monuments have been found almost identical in construction

with that in discussion, carries its origin back to a time very long anterior to that of Catigern and

missible, I must give another theory, advanced by Edward King, who held that it was a cromlech, large, and favorably located for imposing ceremoupon which sacrifices were offered; and as it is nials to be witnessed by a large concourse, he claimed that it was expressly erected for the offering of human victims, the most imposing of all the ceremonial observances of Druid worship. He says: "For here we find in truth a great stone scaffold, raised just high enough for such a horrid exhibition, and no higher; and just large enough in all its proportions for the purpose, and not too large, and so contrived as to render the whole

THE CIRCLE IN OXFORDSHIRE.

his treacherous Saxon foes. The narrative of Irby and Mangles describes twenty-seven "tombs" which they found "on the banks of the Jordan," "resembling what is called Kit's Coty House in Kent; they call these "tombs," but describe them as each only five feet long; the chief difference between these and that of Kent is that they have each a "front stone" which is wanting in the Latter, unless the stone which in Stow's time lay "about a coit's cast from this monument," which has since disappeared, had originally served that

use.

Having given Lambarde's Catigern-tomb theory of the original occasion of the erection of Kit's Coty House, and shown why I cannot deem it ad

CAIRNS AND KISTS-VAEN.

visible to the greatest multitude of people; whilst it was so framed and put together, though superstitiously constructed of unhewn stones in imitation of purer and more primeval usages, that no length of time nor any common efforts of violence could destroy it or throw it down." Diodorus says of the Druidic human sacrifice. "Pouring out a libation upon a man as a victim, they smite him