STONEHENGE, in its present aspect of ruin and disorder, gives but a faint impression of its pristine sublimity and grandeur, and yet enough remains to enable us in idea to recover and replace the majestic proportion of the whole. Its ancient name was Choir Gaur, which may be translated, a circular high place of assembly. The Saxon term, Stonehenge, by which we know it now, means only "the hanging stones," and would naturally occur to a spectator as he gazed in astonishment at its lofty imposts. The plan comprises two concentric circles, and within them two imperfect ovals, forming a cell or sanctum. The outer diameter of the largest circle is 109 feet, and four cubits broad, and the interval between the uprights two cubits wide. The entire circle consisted of thirty stones, crossed at their tops by thirty others, meeting in a kind of architrave; each upright was to be nine cubits high, but at the entrance which faces the north-east, the interval is rather greater. According to modern phraseology and actual computation, the height of the stones on either side the entrance is a little more than thirteen feet, the breadth of one seven feet, of the other six feet four inches, and depth of the transverse over them two feet eight inches; the width of the entrance is five feet. Of the original thirty uprights, seventeen remain. The stones are irregular in form and size, but many of them show

the marks of tools. Eight feet from the interior of this circle is another circle of much smaller stones, rude and uneven in shape; we may assume their proportions to have been half of those in the outer series; they had no horizontal coverings or imposts. Their number, when complete, was forty, and traces of twenty may yet be found. The sanctum of the temple was a space bounded by twothirds of a larger oval, and of an interior smaller oval. The great oval was composed of ten upright stones, capped by five horizontal stones, so as to constitute five sets of trilithons; the uprights rise in height from sixteen to twenty-one feet, the imposts are sixteen feet in length, and not continued beyond the ends of the uprights. Four trilithons remain standing, one fell at the close of the last century, and where it fell its fragments lie Titanic ruins. The small oval consisted of nineteen stones, and eleven of these we still may trace; the inner oval, like the inner circle, was unprovided with any architrave, but the stones of the former were taller and less rugged than those of the latter. Within the sanctum or cell is an altar-stone, fifteen feet in length, prostrate on the ground. Beside the circles, ovals, and altar, there are five smaller detached stones, making the entire number that entered into the composition of the building 140. The width of entrance into the cell, left by the incompleteness of its elliptical boundaries, is forty-three feet. The altar-stone faces the entrance into the temple, at a distance from it of fifty-seven feet. The outer circle was constructed of surface stones, or, to adopt the provincial phrase, sarsens-blocks of sandstone that lie strewn about the chalk downs of Wiltshire. The stones of the inner circle are granitic, and must have been brought a considerable distance. Exterior to the outer circle, and 100 feet from it, is a ditch or trench, surrounding the whole, except that, opposite the entrance, it divides into two parallel lines to form an avenue indicating its approach; the trench is flanked on its outer side by an agger or rampart of earth, which has a circumference of 369 yards. It is a distinction between the religious and military works of the ancient British, that in the former the ditch is inside, and in the latter outside, the agger. The avenue runs north-east and south-west, and the entrance of the temple is directed towards that point of the heavens where the sun rises at the summer solstice.

Half-a-mile to the north of Stonehenge is a race-course or hippodrome, extending cast and west for nearly two miles; it is bounded and enclosed by two ditches 200 cubits asunder, or between 300 and 400 feet. At the eastern extremity is a mound of earth running across the course, supposed to be the place set apart for the company who witnessed the race.