priests, the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire, and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment." Now might not these rocking-stones be employed by the Druidical priests for pronouncing the "sentence of judgment," when applied to in matters of controversy? These stones were not unnoticed by the ancients. Says Pliny, "Juxta Horpesa oppidum Asiæ cauter stat horrenda, una digito mobilis : eadem, si toto corpore impellatur resistans." That is, "near Horpesa, a town of Asia, there stands a dreadful rock, moveable with one finger; the same immovable by the whole body." Moreover, while some thought that it was moved by a divine power, others thought it was moved by some demon. Says Photius, in his Life of Isidore, "I indeed thought that the use of the Baitylion was rather of divine appointment; but Isidore said that it was rather from the devil, for that some demon moved it."* And such, formerly, seems to have been the opinion of the superstitious vulgar in more modern times. Toland, however, quoting from another writer, says, that the rocking-stone near Balvaird "was broken by Cromwell's soldiers; and it was discovered, then, that its motion was performed by a yolk exuberant in the middle of the under-surface of

* « Εγω μεν ωμην θειοτερον είναι το χρημα του βαιτυλου· οδε Ιοιδωρος δαιμονιον μαλλον ελεγεν ειναι· γαρ τινα δαιμονα τον Vita Isidori, apud Photium, in Moore's Ireland,

κινούντα αυτόν.

P. 39.

the upper stone, which was inserted in a cavity in the surface of the lower stone." To which Toland himself adds, further to account for it, 66 as the lower stone was flat, so the upper stone was globular; and that not only a just proportion in the motion was calculated from the weight of the stone, and the wideness of the cavity, as well as the oval figure of the inserted prominence; but that the vast bulk of the upper stone did absolutely conceal the mechanism of the motion; and the better still to impose, there were two or three surrounding flat stones, though that only in the middle was concerned in the feat."*

2

We shall conclude this branch of our subject by remarking, that Bryant seems to consider these rocking-stones as designed for religious memorials. "It was usual," says he, "among the Egyptians, to place with much labour one vast stone upon another, for a religious memorial. The stones they thus placed they sometimes poised so equally that they were affected with the least external force; nay, a breath of wind would sometimes make them vibrate."+ But let the reader judge.

The Round Towers of Ireland. These have excited great attention. They are round conic buildings, from one hundred and twenty feet high to a much lesser height, and from fifty to sixty feet in circumference. They are smooth inside, like gun*Toland, p. 140.

+ Bryant, Anal. Mythol. vol. iii. in Moore, p. 39.

barrels, covered with a conical stone, beneath which there are four small windows, corresponding to the cardinal points of the heavens; and you enter by a door nine or ten feet from the ground. It is said that there are the remains of one hundred of them in all Ireland, and fifty that are perfect. Moore, in his "Ireland," notices the different hypotheses that have been advanced concerning them; and, after having shewed, satisfactorily, that they were not raised by the Danes, as some have supposed; that they were not places of confinement for penitents, as others; or for beacons or watch-towers, as a third class suppose; he states his opinion that they were originally fire-temples. But we should rather consider them as objects of idolatrous worship, or rallying places for such worship. And since we shall, we presume, make it appear that the religion of the British Isles was that of the Phoenicians, we conjecture that they are imitations of those Round Towers found in Phoenicia, and of which the authors of the "Universal History" have given a description and a draught in their first vol. pp. 396 and 397. Moreover, if the Colossus of Rhodes was built in honour of Apollo, the Sun, why not these towers? *

Thus have we taken a review of the several monuments of antiquity, the altar or cromlech,

* On these "Round Towers," a dissertation may be seen in the Appendix.

the carn-altar, the pillar or obelisk, the circular temples, the pillars to serve as marks or memorials, the carns or heaps of stones, the barrows and the rock-idols that are to be found in these British Isles, and have shewn that the sacred writings throw considerable light on their origin and use. We have also treated of the Druids' chair, the Druids' house or hermitage, likewise of the Rocking Stone, and the Round Towers of Ireland, considering them as having a remote connexion with the rest. We shall now conclude with two or three reflections.

First, what book so venerable for its antiquity as the Scripture? We travel abroad and observe a huge stone, at some time immemorial placed for a pillar or obelisk; then a circle of these pillars, and indeed two or three circles of them on the same spot; now we notice a huge cromlech, then a carn, here a barrow, and there a stupendous rock-stone long held in veneration, and we wonder and inquire whence their origin? for what purpose reared? And whence do we derive the most satisfactory replies to these inquiries? We think we have by this essay shewn that they are to be found in the Scriptures; and, with reference to some of these extraordinary objects, only in the Scriptures. And why? Because, as the most ancient records in the world, they record things most ancient. Herodotus, the father of history, wrote only about four or five hundred before

Christ. Homer and Hesiod, the oldest poets, a thousand years before Christ; but Moses wrote about fifteen hundred years before the Christian era commenced. There are fragments of other histories preserved in Josephus, in Eusebius, such as Sanchoniathon the Phoenician, and Berosus the Chaldean; but even those writers whose fragments are preserved by later writers, even the earliest of them was seven or eight hundred years after Moses. The Bible, then, is the resource of the antiquary; and what book so venerable for its hoary antiquity?

Not only is the Bible venerable as supplying the first and only satisfactory information concerning these monuments of antiquity, but also as giving the same with regard to the origin of those idolatrous practices which have had so extensive and powerful an influence in the world. Seventeen hundred years before Christ we have in the book of Job, the oldest writer in the world, mention of the sun and moon as existing objects of worship. Fifteen hundred years before the Christian epoch, we are given to understand, by Moses, that men worshipped the sun and moon, and the host of heaven, and that they bowed down to images and statues; yea, to the likenesses of men, of beasts, of fowls, of creeping things; yea, more, even of their offering sons and daughters to Moloch, or the Sun, as king of the heaven, or to Baal, as lord of the heavens; so, of