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medha, or bull facrifice of India, were actually practifed within the awful bounds of this hallowed circle.

ROLLDRICH,

MEANING THE DRUIDS' WHEEL, OR CIRCLE, A SOLAR TEMPLE: THE WHEEL A SACRED EMBLEM IN INDIA, AND ALLUDING TO THE ROTA SOLIS.

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THE circular temple next in fame and magnitude to Stonehenge is that called ROLLDRICH, near Chipping-Norton, in Oxfordfhire. It is defcribed by Stukeley, in his Abury, as an open temple of a circular form, made of stones fet upright in the ground. The columns that compofe the circle of this temple, like thofe of Stonehenge, are rough and unhewn, and the whole bears even ftronger marks of age and decay than that venerable pile; for they appeared to our author to resemble worm-eaten wood, rather than ftone. The very name of this ancient work, which is in the moft ancient British dialect, indifputably proves it to be of Druid original. Camden calls this circle Rolle-rich ftones, and it is remarkable, that, in a book repofited

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repofited in the Exchequer, fuppofed by Dr. Stukeley to be Doomsday-Book, the name of the adjacent town is ftated to be Rollendrich. Now the term Rollendrich, if rightly spelled, according to the ancient orthography, the Doctor contends fhould be written Rholdrwyg, which means the Druids' wheel, or circle.

Dr. Stukeley farther infers this to have been a Druid temple from the measure on which it is erected. In a letter which he received from Mr. Gale, dated Worcester, Aug. 19, 1719, after that gentleman had visited the antiquity at his requeft, he acquaints him, that the diameter of the circle was thirty-five yards. The Bishop of London also wrote him word, that the distance, at Stonehenge, from the entrance of the area to the temple itself was thirty-five yards; and that the diameter of Stonehenge itself was thirty-five yards. He fuppofes this admeasurement not to have been made with mathematical exactnefs; but obferves, when we look into the comparative scale of English feet and cubits, we difcern fixty cubits of the Druids is the measure fought for. The diameter of the outer circle of Stonehenge and this circle at Rolldrich is exactly equal. The circle itself is compofed

of

of ftones of various fhapes and dimenfions, fet pretty near together. They are flattish, about fixteen inches thick. Originally there feems to have been firty in number, at present there are twenty-two standing, few exceeding four feet in height; but one in the very north point much higher than the rest, seven foot high, five and a half broad. There was an entrance to it from the north-eaft, as is the cafe at Stonehenge.

To this account of Stukeley, I have only to add, from Camden, that the country-people in the neighbourhood have a tradition, that thefe ftones were once men, thus transformed; that in the number of ftones compofing this circle we find again the fexagenary cycle of the Afiatics, and that a wheel was equally a facred fymbol in India as with the Druids; the figure of a very large wheel being cut deep on the rock in the very front of the Elephanta pagoda. The wheel was probably an ancient emblem of astronomical cycles; or rather, as a very ingenious friend of mine, Mr. Frere, one of the authors of that extraordinary production of juvenile genius, the Eton Microcofm, judiciously intimated to me, on mentioning the fingular circumstance of a wheel occurring fo often in the antiquities

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both of India and Britain, it was the rota folis to which their peculiar superstition led those infatuated idolators continually to allude. In truth, by that expreffion, the Latin writers meant the orb of the fun, rota pro folis orbe ufurpatur, fays Stephanus; as the Greeks ufed the word δίσκος,

I proceed to prefent the reader, from Mr. Gough's Camden, with an account of the ferpentine temple of Abury; only premising a few general obfervations concerning THE AN

CIENT SERPENT-WORSHIP.

It is impoffible to fay in what country the worship of ferpents firft originated.

The ferpent was probably a fymbol of the nanodauwv, or evil genius: and those whose fears led them to adore, by way of pacifying, the evil dæmon, erected to the ferpent the first altar. In fucceeding periods, its annual renewing of its skin, added to the great age to which it sometimes arrived, induced the pri mitive race to make it the symbol of immortality. Serpents biting their tails, or interwoven in rings, were thenceforwards their favourite fymbols of vaft aftronomical cycles, of the zodiac, and fometimes of eternity itself. In this ufage of the fymbol we see it infolding all the statues of gods and deified rajahs

rajahs in the facred caverns of Salfette and Elephanta. Symbols alfo being the arbitrary fenfible figns of intellectual ideas, in moral philofophy, the ferpent, doubtlefs, from what they themselves obferved of it and from the Mofaic tradition concerning its being more fubtle than any other animal, became the emblem of wisdom. In the ancient hieroglyphical alphabet, it forms the figure S. It was therefore, mythology and philofophy that first exalted the ferpent, from being confidered as an evil dæmon, and a fymbol of evil, to the rank of a good dæmon, and to be regarded as the fymbol of a benign and perfect numen.

An ancient Phoenician fragment, preserved for pofterity in the Edipus Ægyptiacus, fully explains the notion which the Egyptians and other Pagan nations entertained of this compound hieroglyphic, the GLOBE, WINGS, and SERPENT, which decorated the portals of their proudeft temples. Jupiter, fays the fragment, is an imagined sphere: from that fphere is produced a ferpent. The sphere fhews the divine nature to be without beginning or end; the ferpent his Word, which animates the world, and makes it prolific; his wings, the fpirit of God, that by its motion gives life to the whole mundane system.

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