uries ago, with the rude mourning of a savage clan. I stood
on one of the highest of these the other day, on a great gorse-clad
headland, and sent my spirit out in quest of the old warrior that lay
below--"Audisne haec, Amphiaraee, sub terram condite?" But there was no
answer from the air; though in my sleep one night I saw a wild,
red-bearded man, in a coat of skins, with rude gaiters, and a hat of
foxes' fur on his head; he carried a long staff in his hand, pointed
with iron, and looked mutely and sorrowfully upon me. Who knows if it
was he?

And then of later date are many ruinous strongholds, with Cyclopean
walls, like the huge shattered bulk of _Corfe_, upon its green hill,
between the shoulders of great downs. There are broken abbeys,
pinnacled church-towers in village after village. And then, too, in
hamlet after hamlet, rise quaint stone manors, high-gabled,
many-mullioned, in the midst of barns and byres. One of the sweetest
places I have seen is _Cerne Abbas_. The road to it winds gently up
among steep downs, a full stream gliding through flat pastures at the
bottom. The hamlet has a forgotten, wistful air; there are many houses
in ruins. Close to the street rises the church-tower, of rich and
beautiful design, with gurgoyles and pinnacles, cut out of a soft
orange stone and delicately weathered. At the end of the village
stands a big farm-house, built out of the abbey ruins, with a fine
oriel in one of the granaries. In a little wilderness of trees, the
ground covered with primroses, stands the exquisite old gatehouse with
mullioned windows. I have had for years a poor little engraving of the
place, and it seemed to greet me like an old friend. Then, in the
pasture above, you can see the old terraces and mounds of the monastic
garden, where the busy Benedictines worked day by day; further still,
on the side of the down itself, is cut a very strange and ancient
monument. It is the rude and barbarous figure of a naked man, sixty
yards long, as though moving northwards, and brandishing a huge knotted
club. It is carved deep into the turf, and is overgrown with rough
grass. No one can even guess at the antiquity of the figure, but it is
probably not less than three thousand years old. Some say that it
records the death of a monstrous giant of the valley. The good monks
Christianised it, and named it _Augustine_. But it seems to be
certainly one of the frightful figures of which Caesar speaks, o