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ftanding and feven down, three feet and a half afunder, and eight imposts.

"Eleven uprights have their five imposts on them by the grand entrance. Thefe ftones are from thirteen to twenty feet high. The leffer circle is fomewhat more than eight feet from the infide of the outer one, and confifted of forty leffer ftones, (the highest fix feet) of which only nineteen remain, and only eleven ftanding: the walk between these two circles is three hundred feet in circumference. The adytum, or cell, is an oval, formed of ten ftones, (from fixteen to twenty-two feet high) in pairs, with impofts, which Dr. Stukeley calls trilithons, and above thirty feet high, rifing in height as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair; the highest eight feet. Within these are nineteen more fmaller ftones, of which only fix are ftanding. At the upper end of the adytum is an altar, a large flab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches thick, fixteen feet long, and four broad; preffed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. The whole number of ftones, uprights, impofts, and altars, is exactly one hundred and forty. The ftones are far from being artificial, but were, moft probably, brought from those called

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the Grey Weathers, on Marlborough-Downs, fifteen or fixteen miles off; and, if tried with a tool, they appear of the fame hardness, grain, and colour; generally reddifh. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beafts, have been found in digging in and about Stonehenge; but the human bones our author speaks of only in the circumjacent barrows.

"Dr. Stukeley, in 1723, dug on the infide of the altar, to a bed of folid chalk, mixed with flints. In the reign of Henry VIII. was found here a plate of tin, infcribed with many letters, but in fo ftrange a character, that neither Sir Thomas Elliott, a learned antiquary, nor Mr. Lilly, mafter of St. Paul's school, could make them out. This plate, to the great loss of the learned world, was soon after loft.

"Two ftone pillars appear at the foot of the bank next the area in which the buildings ftand; and those are answered by two fpherical pits, at the foot of the faid bank, one with a fingle bank of earth about it, and the other with a double bank, feparated by a ditch.

"There are three entrances from the plain to the ftructure, the moft confiderable of which is from the north-eaft; and at each of them

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were raised, on the outfide of the trench, two huge ftones, with two smaller within, parallel to them. The avenues to Stonehenge was firft obferved by Mr. Aubrey. Dr. Stukeley found that it had extended more than one thousand feven hundred feet down to the bottom of the valley, and was raised a little above the Downs, between two ditches. At the bottom it turns off to the right, or eaft, with a circular sweep, and then in a strait line goes up the hill between two groups of feven barrows each, called the King's Graves. The other branch points north-weft, and enters the Curfus. This is half a mile north from Stonehenge, ten thousand feet, or two miles, long, inclosed by two ditches, three hundred and fifty feet afunder."

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There is no occafion for my troubling the reader with any extended obfervations on thefe accounts of STONEHENGE. Whoever has read, or may be inclined to read, my hif tory of the origin of Oriental Architecture, as connected with the aftronomical and mythological notions of the ancients, printed in the third volume of this work, and inferted there purposely to ferve as his guide in the confideration of the form and ornaments of the facred fabrics of Afia, during the farther in

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vestigation of the phyfical theology of the Eaft, may see most of the affertions realized in the form and arrangement of this old Druid temple. For, in the firft place, it is circular, as it is there proved all ancient temples to the Sun and Vefta, or elementary fire, invariably were: In the second place, the adytum, or fanctum fanctorum, is of an oval form, reprefenting the mundane egg, after the manner that all those adyta, in which the facred fire perpetually blazed, the emblem of that vivacious invigorating energy, which, pervading the centre, warms and animates the whole univerfe, were conftantly fabricated: In the third place, the fituation is fixed aftronomically, as we shall make fully evident when we come to speak of Abury, the grand entrances both of this temple and that fuperb monument of antiquity being placed exactly northeaft, as all the gates, or portals, of the ancient caverns and cavern-temples were, efpecially those dedicated to Mithra, that is, the Sun, who rifes in the eaft; and who, in his northern course, sheds his moft benign influences, for which reason the Indians exult in dying when the fun is to the north of the equator: In the fourth place, the number of ftones and uprights, making together exactly fixty, plainly alludes

VOL. VI.

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alludes to that peculiar and prominent feature of Afiatic aftronomy, the SEXAGENARY CYCLE, being entirely of Indian and Chinese invention, and, as we fhall hereafter fhew the multiple of five revolutions of the planet Jupiter, while the number of ftones forming the inner circle of the cove, being exactly nineteen, again difplays to us the famous Metonic, or rather Indian, cycle, and that of thirty, repeatedly occurring, the celebrated age, or generation, of the Druids: Fifthly, the temple, being uncovered, proves it to have been erected under impreffions fimilar to those which animated the ancient Perfians, who rejected the impious idea of confining the Deity, whofe temple is earth and skies, within the fcanty limits of an inclosed shrine, however magnificent, and therefore confequently, at all events, it must have been erected before the era of Zoroafter, who flourifhed more than five hundred years before Chrift, and who firft covered in the Perfian temples to fave from extinction, by the violence of wind and rain, the confecrated fires; and, finally, the head and horns of oxen and other animals, found buried on the spot, prove that the fanguinary rites peculiar to the folar fuperftition, and more particularly the Go

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