Plain; and Saturn by the great blocks at
Stonehenge. The Druids, who brought Eastern
learning to Europe, were great astronomers,
Mr. Duke says, and represented numerical
and astronomical cycles by these Avebury
stones. He will have it that the numerical
cycles were compounds of the mystic number
four, sacred as an emblem of the four letters
by which the name of the Supreme Being was
expressed in the early languages. The one
hundred stones of the outer ring were four,
twenty-five times repeated, and the four
hundred of the avenue one hundred four times
repeated, whilst the thirty stones of the outer
ring of each double circle represented the
lunar cycle, or days of the month, and the
twelve of the inner the months of the year.

In this way Wiltshire became a great fossil
almanack, and the priests, perambulating the
county before Moore and Zadkiel had
conferred their boons on the world, could know
and reckon the proper days for observing
religious festivals. After all these puzzle-brain
theories, the result is no great enlargement
of knowledge. They just leave us with a
confused notion that the circles might have had
some obscure astronomical meaning, and that is
all. It is even uncertain whether Silbury Hill
was cut into its present geometrical form, or was
built up by manual labour. It is nearly as high
as St. Michael's Mount, covering more than
five acres of land; and it has been calculated
that even in these days navigators could not
build it up for less than twenty thousand
pounds. It was long thought to be the burial
mound of the founder of Avebury; but it has
been twice opened—first in 1777, and afterwards
in 1849, and no trace of any interment could be
found. Many think its name implies that it
was sacred to the god Sul or Sol, as St. Anne's
Hill was to Tanaris, the god of thunder. There
is no tradition about Avebury; but the story at
Stonehenge is that no one can count the stones
twice alike. When Charles the Second was
waiting there for the friends who were to
conduct him to the coast of Sussex, where a vessel
was lying off for him, he counted the stones
to beguile the time, and refuted the vulgar
error to his own satisfaction.

The old legend of Stonehenge was, that the
stones were brought from Africa to Ireland by
giants, and that Merlin, by his incantations,
floated them across the sea to please King
Ambrosius, the last British king, who wished
to commemorate the massacre on Salisbury Plain
of Vortigen and three hundred of his nobles by
Hengist the Saxon. In the middle ages
Stonehenge was called "the Giant's Dance." At
Stanton Drew, a Druidical ruin near Bristol,
the legends of the old stone-rings grow more
grotesque. A giant is said to have thrown one
of the stones from a neighbouring hill, and the
chief circle is supposed to consist of the petrified
bodies of a wicked wedding party, who would
dance on Sunday, and to whom the Devil
presented himself as piper, leading them a pretty
dance, and ending by leaving them turned into
pillars of stone.

Glancing on through Wiltshire, the crow
rests on the highest weathercock of Devizes,
the old town, so called, as tradition says, from
its having been formerly divided between the
king and the bishop. There is a curious
inscription on the market cross, which records
a warning to dishonest traders. In 1753 a
woman, named Ruth Pierce, came with two
neighbours from the Vale of Pewsey, to buy,
with their combined money, a sack of wheat.
When her companions paid Ruth did not lay
down her money, though she asserted she had.
They loudly accused her, and she then wished
she might drop down dead if she had not paid.
She had scarcely uttered the words before she
fell down and expired; and in one of her
clenched hands, the missing money was found.

It was the Bear Inn at Devizes, that the father
of Sir Thomas Lawrence kept; and here the
handsome boy learnt to draw likenesses and
recite poetry. The father was a restless,
desultory man, who had been a solicitor, a poet,
an artist, an exciseman: "everything by turns,
and nothing long." His life had been a web of
unfinished schemes and incomplete studies.
Proud of his son, he used to appear in
powdered periwig and clean ruffles, to ask his
guests whether Tom should recite to them from
the poets, or draw their likenesses? Garrick
used always to stop at the Bear, to hear the
speeches Tom had learned since the last time;
Prince Hoare, Sheridan, Wilkes, and Lord
Kenyon, all praised and patronised the pretty
boy who had painted his first portrait at six.
Lord Kenyon used to describe the door bursting
open, and the child dashing in riding on a stick.
He was asked if he could take the gentleman's
likeness? "That I can," said the boy, "and
very like too." The restless father soon threw
up the posting-house, and settled at Bath:
where Tom became renowned for his crayon
likenesses, and his portrait of Mrs. Siddons.

The crow from the top of Roundway Hill
looks down on the scene of the defeat of Sir
William Waller by Lord Wilmot in 1643, of
which Clarendon has left us a fine sketch.
After the battle of Lansdown, the royalists
under the Marquis of Hertford and Prince
Maurice, fell back on Devizes, followed by
Waller, who invaded the town and erected
batteries. The town was open then, without
the least defence but small hedges and ditches,
in which cannon were planted. The avenues
were barricaded to stop the puritan cavalry.
The Earl of Crawford, trying to send powder
into the town, was driven off with the loss of
his cannon. The town was in imminent danger.
The musketeers had only one hundred and fifty
pounds weight of match left; but they collected
all the bed cords and beat and boiled them in
saltpetre; they then took heart, Lord Wilmot
being at hand. He soon arrived with fifteen
hundred horse and two small field pieces,
which he discharged, to give notice to the
town of his arrival. In the meanwhile Waller
was too confident; he had refused terms to
the cavaliers, and had written to the parliament,
to say that by the next post he would