y Merlin's aid from Scythia's shore
To Amber's fatal plain Pendragon bore,
Huge frame of giant hands, the mighty pile,
To entomb his Britons slain by Hengist's guile:
Or Druid priests, sprinkled with human gore,
Taught 'mid thy massy maze their mystic lore;
Or Danish chiefs, enriched by savage spoil,
To Victory's idol vast, an unhewn shrine,
Reared the huge heap; or, in thy hallowed round,
Repose the kings of Brutus' genuine line;
Or here those kings in solemn state were crowned;
Studious to trace thy wondrous origin,
We muse on many an ancient tale renowned."

[Illustration: STONEHENGE, FROM THE NORTH.]

Stonehenge is about nine miles north of Salisbury, near the town of
Amesbury, where another ancient camp, known as "The Ramparts," crowns a
wooded hill, around which the Avon flows, the camp enclosing nearly
forty acres. Stonehenge stands in a bleak, bare situation on Salisbury
Plain, and in its original perfection, as nearly as can now be judged,
consisted of two concentric circles and two ellipses of upright stones,
surrounded by a bank and ditch, outside of which is a single upright
stone and traces of a hippodrome. The entrance to the cluster of circles
was from the north-east, and the avenue to it is still traceable by the
banks of earth. The outer circle at Stonehenge originally consisted of
thirty upright stones fixed in the ground at intervals of about three
and a half feet. On the top of them thirty other stones formed a
continuous ring about sixteen feet above the ground. Within this circle,
and leaving a space about nine feet wide between, was another circle of
thirty or forty unhewn stones about four to seven feet high. Within
this, again, was the grandest part of the structure--a great ellipse
formed of five triplets of stones or trilithons, each composed of two
uprights and one placed crosswise. Within these was the inner ellipse of
nineteen obelisks surrounding the altar-stone. Such was Stonehenge
originally, but its ruins now appear very differently, and are only a
confused pile of huge stones, for the most part such as are found on the
neighboring plain and known as sarsens (a siliceous sandstone), though
some of the smaller ones may be boulders brought from a distance. The
diameter of the enclosure is three hundred and thirty-six feet. On the
outer circle sixteen of the uprights and six of the surmounting stones
forming the ring remain in their original position