t the
request of the Britons, sent over with ten thousand men to assist them
against the Saxons, whom Vortigern had invited into Britain. Ambrosius
had such successes against the Saxons that the Britons chose him for
their king, and compelled Vortigern to give up to him all the western
parts of the kingdom divided by the Roman highway, called Watling
Street. Ultimately Ambrosius became sole monarch of Britain. Geoffrey
says that this monarch built Stonehenge. Ambrosius, we are told,
coming to a monastery where lay buried three hundred British lords who
had been massacred by Hengist, resolved to perpetuate the memory of
this action by raising a monument over their remains.

By the advice of Tremounus, Archbishop of Caerleon, Ambrosius
consulted Merlin, the celebrated magician, as to how he should
proceed. Merlin recommended him to send to Ireland for certain great
stones, called _chorea gigantum_, the giant's dance, placed in a
circle on a hill called Killaci, which had been brought there by
giants from the farthest borders of Africa. A strong force was, in
accordance with this advice, sent to Ireland, but the king of that
country derided the folly of the Britons in undertaking such a
ridiculous expedition, and opposed them in battle. The Irish king was
vanquished, and, by the direction and assistance of Merlin, who had
accompanied the expedition, the wonderful stones were conveyed to
Salisbury, and, by order of Ambrosius, placed over the graves of the
British lords. These gravestones are what are now called Stonehenge.
Such stories, as may be expected, are discredited by historians, but
our best antiquaries disagree as to the origin of these monuments of
antiquity.

Gale, Dickenson, and others say the Druids borrowed their philosophy
and religion from the Jews and Eastern heathen nations. Our older
antiquarians believe that cromlechs are Druidical altars, in
imitation of older heathen altars--a theory supported by reference to
the stones called Petroma, near the temple of Eleusinian Damater in
Arcadia: The Philistines pointed to the Deluge in their hieroglyphics
of the serpent and mundane egg, the history which the serpent is
supposed to designate being that of Noah, and the egg being reckoned
an emblem of the ark, from the circumstance of it containing the
rudiments of future life. The serpent is not unfrequently represented
when reference is made to the betrayal of Eve.

People making acknowledgment to the gods fo