an abomination, as the worship of stocks, and stones, at all:
but, as far as any thing so horrid is to be accounted for, there is no
way so likely of rendering a possible account; as that of concluding,
that some of these pyramidal stones, at least, like the image of
_Diana_, actually did fall, in the earliest ages, from the clouds; in
the same manner as these pyramidal stones fell, in 1794, in Tuscany.

_Plutarch_, it is well known, mentions[Q] a stone which formerly fell
from the clouds, in _Thrace_, and which _Anaxagoras_ fancied[R] to have
fallen from the sun.

And it is very remarkable, that the old writer, from whom Plutarch had
his account, described the cloud, from which this stone was said to
fall, in a manner (if we only make some allowance for a little
exaggeration in barbarous ages,) very similar to _Soldani's_ account of
the cloud in Tuscany.--It hovered about for a long time; seemed to throw
out splinters, which flew about, like wandering stars, before they fell;
and at last it cast down to the earth a stone of extraordinary size.

Pliny,[S] who tells us that not only the remembrance of this event, but
that the stone itself was preserved to his days, says, it was of a dark
burnt colour. And though he does indeed speak of it as being of an
extravagant weight and size, in which circumstance perhaps he was
misled: yet he mentions _another_ of a moderate size, which fell in
_Abydos_, and was become an object of idolatrous worship in that place;
as was still _another_, of the same sort, at _Potidaea_.

_Livy_, who like _Herodotus_, has been oftentimes censured as too
credulous, and as a relater of falsehoods, for preserving traditions of
_an extraordinary kind_; which, after all, in ages of more enlarged
information, have proved to have been founded in truth; describes[T] a
fall of stones to have happened on mount _Alba_, during the reign of
_Tullus Hostilius_, (that is about 652 years before the Christian aera),
in words that exactly convey an idea of just such a phaenomenon, as this
which has so lately been observed in Tuscany.

He says, the senate were told, that _lapidibus pluisse_, it had rained
stones. And, when they doubted of the fact; and sent to inquire; they
were assured that stones had actually fallen; and had fallen just as
hail does, which is concreted in a storm.[U]

He mentions also shortly another shower of stones,[V] A. C. 202, and
still a third,[W] which must have happened about the year