a celebrated monument of antiquity, stands in the middle of a flat area near the summit of a hill six miles distant from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a circular double bank and ditch near 30 feet broad, after crossing which we ascend 30 yards before we reach the work. The whole fabric consists of two circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about 108 feet diameter, consisting when entire of 60 stones, 30 uprights and 30 imposts, of which remain only 24 uprights, 17 standing and 7 down, 3½ feet slumber, and 8 imposts. Eleven uprights have their 5 imposts on them by the grand entrance. These stones are from 13 to 20 feet high. The lesser circle is somewhat more than 8 feet from the inside of the outer one, and consisted of 40 lesser stones (the highest 6 feet), of which only 19 remain, and only 11 standing: the walk between these two circles is 300 feet in circumference. The Adytum or Cell is an oval formed of 10 stones (from 16 to 22 feet high), in pairs, with imposts, which Dr Stukeley calls trilithons, and above 30 feet high, rising in height as they go round, and each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair; the highest 8 feet. Within these are 10 more smaller flint stones, of which only 6 are standing. At the upper end of the Adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, 26 inches thick, 16 feet long, and 4 broad; pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights, imposts, and altar, is exactly 140. The stones are far from being artificial, but were most probably brought from those called the Grey Weathers on Marlborough Downs, 15 or 16 miles off; and if tried with a tool they appear of the same hardness, grain, and colour, generally reddish. The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found on digging in and about Stonehenge; and human bones in the circumjacent barrows. There are three entrances from the plain to this structure, the most considerable of which is from the north-east, and at each of them were raised on the outside of the trench two huge stones with two smaller within parallel to them.

It has been long a dispute among the learned, by what nation, and for what purpose, these enormous stones were collected and arranged. The first account of this structure we meet with is in Geoffroy of Monmouth, who, in the reign of King Stephen, wrote the history of the Britons in Latin. He tells us, that it was erected by the counsel of Merlin the British enchanter, at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius the last British king, in memory of 460 Britons who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. The next account is that of Polydore Virgil, who says that the Britons erected this as a sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius. Others suppose it to have been a sepulchral monument of Boadicea the famous British queen. Inigo Jones is of opinion, that it was a Roman temple; from a stone 16 feet long, and four broad, placed in an exact position to the eastward altar-fashion. Mr Charlton attributed it to the Danes, who were two years masters of Wiltshire. A tin tablet, on which were some unknown characters, supposed to be Punic, was dug up near it in the reign of Henry VIII. but is lost; probably that might have given some information respecting its founders. Its common name, Stonehenge, is Saxon, and signifies a "stone gallows," to which those stones, having transverse imposts, bear some resemblance. It is also called in Welsh choir gour, or "the giants dance."

Mr Grofe thinks that Dr Stukeley has completely proved this structure to have been a British temple in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the words choir gour "the great choir or temple." The learned Mr Bryant is of opinion that it was erected by a colony of Cuthites probably before the time of the Druids; because it was usual with them to place one vast stone upon another for a religious memorial; and these they often placed so equably, that even a breath of wind would sometimes make them vibrate. Of such stones one remains at this day in the pile of Stonehenge. The ancients distinguished stones erected with a religious view, by the name of amber; by which was signified any thing solar and divine. The Grecians called them ἀμβρόσια πέτραι, petrae ambrosiae. Stonehenge, according to Mr Bryant, is composed of these amber stones: hence the next town is denominated Ambrosbury; not from a Roman Ambrofus, for no such person ever existed, but from the ambrosiac petrae, in whose vicinity it stood. Some of these were rocking stones; and there was a wonderful monument of this sort near Penzance in Cornwall, which still retains the name of main-amber, or the sacred stones. Such a one is mentioned by Apollonius Rhodius, supposed to have been raised in the time of the Argonauts, in the island Tinos, as the monument of the two-winged sons of Boreas, slain by Hercules; and there are others in China and other countries.