great expanse
of the Plain reflects, as water would, the leaden lowering skies. Then
perhaps the tragic mystery of the place will fire the imagination as
no other scene the wide world over could. Stonehenge is unique
whichever way one looks at it. In its age, its uncouth savage
strength, and its secretiveness. That it will hold that secret to the
end of time, notwithstanding the clever and plausible guesses of
archaeologist and astronomer, is almost beyond any doubt, and it is
well that it should be so.

The appearance of Stonehenge has been likened to a herd of elephant
browsing on the Plain. The simile is good and is particularly
applicable to its aspect from the Amesbury road--the least imposing of
the approaches. The straight white highway, and the fact that the
Stones are a little below the observer, detract very much from the
impressiveness of the scene. The usual accompaniments of a visit, a
noisy and chattering crowd of motorists, eager to rush round the
enclosure quickly, to purchase a packet of postcards and be off; the
hut for the sale of the cards, and the absurdly incongruous, but
(alas!) necessary, policeman, go far to spoil the visit for the more
reverent traveller. But if he will go a little way to the south and
watch the gaunt shapes against the sky for a time and thus realize
their utter remoteness from that stream of evanescent mortality
beneath, the unknown ages that they have stood here upon the lonely
waste, the dynasties, nay, the very races, that have come and
conquered and gone, and the almost certainty that the broad metalled
highway which passes close to them will in turn disappear and give
place, while they still stand, to the turf of the great green expanse
around; then the awe that surrounds Stonehenge will be felt and
understood.

The early aspect of Stonehenge was far more elaborate than as we see
it to-day, and the avenues that led to the inner circles and the
smaller and outer rings have to a large extent disappeared. The stones
are enclosed in a circular earthwork 300 feet across. The outer circle
of trilithons, 100 feet in diameter, is composed of monoliths of
sandstone originally four feet apart and thirty in number. Inside this
circle is another of rough unhewn stones of varying shapes and sizes.
Within this again, forming a kind of "holy place," are two
ellipses--the outer of trilithons five in number and the inner of blue
stones of the same geological formation as the rough sto