and more in a service of complete idolatry and worship—religion became astrolatry."

Dean Milman says, "Down to the captivity, the Jews of Palestine had been in contact only with the religions of the neighbouring nations, which, however differently modified, appear to have been essentially the same, a sort of Nature-worship, in which the host of heaven, especially the sun and moon, under different names, Baal and Moloch, Astarte and Mylitta, and probably as symbols or representatives of the active and passive powers of nature, no doubt with some distinction of their attributes, were the predominant objects. These religions had long degenerated into cruel or licentious superstitions; and the Jews, in falling off to the idolatry of their neighbours, or introducing foreign rites into their own religious system, not merely offended against the great primal distinction of their faith-the unity of the Godhead-but sunk from the pure, humane, and comparatively civilised institutes of their law-giver, to the loose and sanguinary usages of barbarism.” 2

Let us hear, too, what Mr. Tylor (who has made the primitive culture of mankind his especial study) says upon solar worship: "Rivalling in power and glory the all-encompassing heaven, the sun moves eminent among the deities of nature, no mere cosmic globe affecting distant material worlds by force in the guise of light and heat and gravity, but a living reigning Lord :

'O Thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd,

Looks't from thy sole dominion like the God
Of this new world.'

It is no exaggeration to say, with Sir William Jones, that one

"The Gentile and the Jew," vol. i., p. 67.

"History of Christianity, book i., c. 2. Dean Milman refers to Bohlen, (das alte Indien, p. 139 et seq.) who gives a long list of the festivals of the sun; and to Dr. Richard's valuable work on Egyptian Mythology; on the Deification of the Active and Passive Powers of Generation; the marriage of the Sun and the Earth, p. 40, and pp. 62–75.

The writer cannot divest himself of the idea that, at Abury, a symbolical representation was intended of the generative and fructifying powers of the sun in its connection with the earth, the "Tаμμnтop Te yĥ" apostrophized by Prometheus, (Prom. Vinotus 90).

great fountain of all idolatry in the four quarters of the globe was the veneration paid by men to the sun: it is no more than an exaggeration to say, with Mr. Helps, of the sun-worship in Peru, that it was inevitable. Sun worship is by no means universal among the lower races of mankind, but manifests itself in the upper levels of savage religion in districts far and wide over the earth, often assuming the prominence which it keeps and develops in the faiths of the barbaric world. Why some races are sun-worshippers and others not, is indeed too hard a question to answer in general terms. Yet one important reason is obvious, that the sun is not so evidently the god of wild hunters and fishers, as of the tillers of the soil, who watch him day by day, giving or taking away their wealth and their very life. On the geographical significance of sun-worship, D'Orbigny has made a remark, suggestive if not altogether sound, connecting the worship of the sun not so much with the torrid regions where his glaring heat oppresses man all day long, and drives him to the shade for refuge, as with climates where his presence is welcomed for its life-giving heat, and nature chills at his departure."1

'Tylor's Primitive Culture, ii., p. 260. Most of us, doubtless, are acquainted with Southey's sonnet :

"I marvel not, O Sun! that unto Thee

In adoration man should bow the knee,

And pour his prayer of mingled awe and love;
For like a God thou art, and on thy way
Of glory sheddest with benignant ray,
Beauty, aud life, and joyance from above.

No longer let these mists thy radiance shroud,
These cold raw mists that chill the comfortless day;
But shed thy splendour through the opening cloud
And cheer the earth once more, The languid flowers
Lie scentless, beaten down with heavy rain;
Earth asks thy presence, saturate with showers;

O Lord of Light! put forth thy beams again
For damp and cheerless are the gloomy hours."

The most eloquent writer of English in modern times, says: "It may be easy to prove that the ascent of Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify to us? If only languid return to frivolous amusement, or fruitless labour, it will, indeed, not be easy for us to conceive the power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if, for us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restoration to the sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life-if it means the thrilling of new strength through every nerve,-the shedding over us a better peace than the peace of night, in the power of the dawn,—and the purging of

In such a climate as that of Britain, dependent so much on solar influence, for its material prosperity, would it be unreasonable to suppose that the solar cultus would prevail? It can hardly have been an accident that the stone without the circles at Stonehenge should have been so placed that the sun should rise immediately over it at the summer solstice. A remarkable account is given by Mr. W. G. Palgrave of a very similar structure to Stonehenge, which he found in Arabia, where the heavenly bodies were the objects of worship; it is as follows: "We had halted for a moment on the verge of the uplands, to enjoy the magnificent prospect before us. All along the ridge where we stood, and visible at various distances down the level, rose the tall, circular watch-towers of Kaseem. But immediately before us stood a more remarkable monument, one that fixed the attention and wonder even of our Arab companions themselves. For hardly had we descended the narrow path where it winds from ledge to ledge down to the bottom, when we saw before us several huge stones, like enormous boulders, placed endways perpendicularly on the soil, while some of them yet upheld similar masses laid transversely over their summit. They were arranged in a curve, once forming part, it would appear, of a large circle, and many other like fragments lay rolled on the ground at a moderate distance; the number of them still upright was, to speak from memory, eight or nine. Two, at about ten or twelve feet apart one from the other, and resembling huge gate-posts, yet bore their horizontal lintel, a long block laid across them; a few were deprived of their upper traverse, the rest supported each its head-piece in defiance of time and of the more destructive efforts of man. So nicelybalanced did one of these cross-bars appear, that in hope it might prove a rocking-stone, I guided my camel right under it, and then

evil vision and fear by the baptism of its dew;-if the sun itself is an influence, to us also, of spiritual good-and becomes thus in reality, not in imagination, to us also, a spiritual power, we may then soon overpass the narrow limit of conception which kept that power impersonal, and rise with the Greek to the thought of an angel, who rejoiced as a strong man to run his course, whose voice, calling to life and to labour, rang round the earth, and whose going forth was to the ends of heaven."-Ruskin's "Queen of the Air," p. 11.

stretching up my riding stick at arm's length could just manage to touch and push it, but it did not stir. Meanwhile the respective heights of camel, rider, and stick taken together would place the stone in question full fifteen feet from the ground. These blocks seem by their quality, to have been hewn from the neighbouring limestone cliff, and roughly shaped, but present no further trace of art, no groove or cavity of sacrificial import, much less anything intended for figure or ornament. The people of the country attribute their erection to Darim, and by his own hands, too, seeing that he was a giant; also for some magical ceremony, since he was a magician. Pointing towards Rass, our companions affirmed that a second and similar stone circle, also of gigantic dimensions, existed there, and lastly they mentioned a third towards the south-west. That the object of these strange constructions was in some measure religions, seems to me hardly doubtful; and if the learned conjectures that would discover a planetary symbolism in Stonehenge and Carnac have any real foundation, this Arabian monument, erected in the land where the heavenly bodies are known to have been once venerated by the inhabitants, may make a like claim; in fact, there is little difference between the stone wonder of Kaseem and that of Wiltshire, except that the one is in Arabia, the other, the more perfect, in England.'

Dr. Thurnam, in his "Historical Ethnology of Britain " (chap. v. of the introduction to the "Crania Britannica ") says; "Various British coins exhibit symbols of stars, crescents, and suns, which may refer to the ancient astral and elemental worship," and refers

1 Narrative of a year's journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, 1862— 63, by William Gifford Palgrave, vol. i., p. 250, 1865. Sir J. Lubbock, referring to Bonstettin, Sur les Dolmens, p. 27, says, "that Kohen, a Jesuit Missionary, has recently discovered in Arabia, near Khabb, in the district of Kasim, three large stone circles, described as being extremely like Stonehenge, and consisting of very lofty triliths."--p. 122, second edition. Dr. Thurnam has a memorandum to the following effect, from Selden "de Dis Syris, Syntagma ii., c. xv., acervus Mercurii, &c." Selden is quoting several Jewish and Talmudic writers, one of them saying: Lapides fani Merkolis sic dispositi erant, ut unus hinc, alter illinc, tertius super utrumque collocaretur;" and that "Merkolis, binis lapidibus, sibi mutuo adjacentibus, tertius lapis imponebatur."

to the engravings of some gold coins found on Farley Heath, Surrey, which are given at p. 304 of the thirteenth volume ol the Archaological Journal. The Rev. Prebendary Earle, also argues from these characters on British coins in favour of the solar theory, but this view is not acquiesced in by all numismatists. The writer's old and valued friend, Mr. W. S. W. Vaux, F.R.S., President of the Numismatic Society, has kindly furnished him with the following communication: "There is no mystery about the origin of the earliest coins of Britain. They are degraded types of Gaulish coins, and these Gaulish coins again are degraded types of those of Philip of Macedon. When the Gauls invaded Macedonia, they brought back, as part of their plunder, gold money of Philip; and as they had none before (so far as we know) they set to work to copy what they had found. The first copies are sufficiently well done to be like their originals. You find IAIJOY legible and a victory driving a chariot. Soon the Greek letters are lost, and the victory and chariot become indistinct. Some of these indistinct coins found their way to Britain in the course of trade, and were imitated by the Britons, each imitation being one stage farther off from the original Philip's, till, at length, all notion of a horse and chariot is lost. The horse remains, but such a nondescript animal (sometimes with his tail divided into three distinct tails!) that you would hardly guess that it was meant for a horse. Then the chariot departs altogether, and its wheels appear anywhere on the coins-above, before, in front of other objects. Some of the circles alluded to by Dr. Thurnam are probably these wheels. I doubt altogether the existence of any astral or mythic marks, though, of course, a star or a wheel with the spokes crossing will be seized on by some as representing the sun, and so on. These gold British coins may be considered as before or as contemporary with Julius Cæsar. After his time we find Roman types on British coins."

Having said so much upon the probable connection of Stonehenge with sun-worship, it will be well to introduce here the opinions which have been broached by antiquaries and others since the publication of Sir Richard Hoare's volume of "Ancient Wilts," in 1812.