ppear to be of very great antiquity, and to have been first raised to transmit to posterity precepts of philosophy, which were cut in hieroglyphical characters: afterwards they were used to immortalize the great actions of heroes, and the memory of persons beloved. The first obelisk mentioned in history was that of Rameses king of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war, which was 40 cubits high. Phius, another king of Egypt, raised one of 55 cubits; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, another of 88 cubits, in memory of Arinoë. Augustus erected one at Rome in the Campus Martius, which served to mark the hours on a horizontal dial, drawn on the pavement. They were called by the Egyptian priests the fingers of the sun, because they were made in Egypt also to serve as styles or gnomons to mark the hours on the ground. The Arabs still call them Pharao's needles; whence the Italians call them aquiglia, and the French aiguilles.

The famous obelisks called the devil's arrows, now reduced to three, the fourth having been taken down in the last century, stand about half a mile from the town of Borough-Bridge to the south-west, in three fields, separated by a lane, 200 feet apart, nearly on high ground sloping every way. Mr Drake urges many arguments for their Roman antiquity, and plainly proves them to be natural and brought from Plumpton quarries about five miles off, or from Ickly 16 miles off. The crofs in the town, 12 feet high, is of the same kind of stone. The easternmost or highest is 22 feet and a half high by 4 broad, and 14½ in girth; the second 21½ by 5½; the third 16½ by 8½. Stukeley's measures differ. The flutings are cut in the stone but not through: the tallest stands alone, and leans to the south. Plot and Stukeley affirm them to be British monuments, originally hewn square. Dr Gale supposed that they were Mercuries, which have lost their heads and inscriptions; but in a MS. note in his Antoninus, he acknowledges that he was misinformed, and that there was no cavity to receive a bust.

On the north side of Penrith, in the churchyard, are two square obelisks, of a single stone each, 11 or 12 feet high,