" Can't you see the beautiful
picture? And when her nunnery was gone in 980, another queen, far, far
more wicked than Guinevere, built on the same spot a convent to expiate
the murder of her stepson at Corfe Castle. We are going to Corfe, by and
by, so I shall send my thoughts back to Amesbury from there, in spite of
the fact that Elfreda's nuns became so naughty they had to be banished.
Nor shall I forget a lover who loved at Amesbury--Sir George Rodney, who
adored the fascinating Countess of Hertford so desperately, that after
her marriage he composed some verses in her honour, and fell then upon
his sword. Why don't men do such things for us nowadays? Were the "dear,
dead women" so much more desirable than we?

Wasn't Amesbury a beautiful "leading up" to Stonehenge? It's quite near,
you know. It doesn't seem as if anything ought to be near, but a good
many things are--such as farms. Yet they don't spoil it. You never even
think of them, or of anything except Stonehenge itself, once you have
seen the first great, dark finger of stone, pointing mysteriously
skyward out of the vast plain.

That is the way Stonehenge breaks on you, suddenly, startlingly, like a
cry in the night.

I was very glad we had the luck to arrive alone, for not long after we'd
entered the charmed, magic circle of the giant plinths, a procession of
other motor-cars poured up to the gates. Droves of chauffeurs, and
bevies of pretty ladies in motor hats swarmed like living anachronisms
among the monuments of the past. Of course, _we_ didn't seem to
ourselves to be anachronisms, because what is horrid in other people is
always quite different and excusable, or even piquant, in oneself; and I
hastily argued that _our_ motor, Apollo, the Sun God, was really
appropriate in this place of fire worship. Even the Druids couldn't have
objected to _him_, although they would probably have sacrificed all of
_us_ in a bunch, unless we could have hastily proved that we were a new
kind of god and goddess, driving chariots of fire. (Anyhow, motor-cars
are making history just as much as the Druids did, so they ought to be
welcome anywhere, in any scene, and they seem to have more right to be
at Stonehenge than patronizing little Pepys.)

You remember Rolde, in Holland, don't you, with its miniature
Stonehenge? Well, it might have been made for Druids' children to play
dolls with, compared to this.

If the Phoenicians raised Stonehenge in worship of their fiery