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Chapter XVI - StonehengeChapter XVI - Stonehenge
Chapter XVI - Stonehenge
It had been agreed between my friend Mr. C. and me, that before I left
England we should make an excursion together to Stonehenge, which neither of
us had seen; and the project pleased my fancy with the double attraction of
the monument and the companion. It seemed a bringing together of extreme
points, to visit the oldest religious monument in Britain, in company with her
latest thinker, and one whose influence may be traced in every contemporary
book. I was glad to sum up a little my experiences, and to exchange a few
reasonable words on the aspects of England, with a man on whose genius I set a
very high value, and who had as much penetration, and as severe a theory of
duty, as any person in it. On Friday, 7th July, we took the South Western
Railway through Hampshire to Salisbury, where we found a carriage to convey us
to Amesbury. The fine weather and my friend`s local knowledge of Hampshire, in
which he is wont to spend a part of every summer, made the way short. There
was much to say, too, of the travelling Americans, and their usual objects in
London. I thought it natural that they should give some time to works of art
collected here, which they cannot find at home, and a little to scientific
clubs and museums, which at this moment, make London very attractive. But my
philosopher was not contented. Art and "high art" is a favorite target for his
wit. "Yes, Kunst is a great delusion, and Goethe and Schiller wasted a great
deal of good time on it:" - and he thinks he discovers that old Goethe found
this out, and, in his later writings, changed his tone. As soon as men begin
to talk of art, architecture, and antiquities, nothing good comes of it. He
wishes to go through the British Museum in silence, and thinks a sincere man
will see something, and say nothing. In these days, he thought, it would
become an architect to consult only the grim necessity, and say, "I can build
you a coffin for such dead persons as you are, and for such dead purposes as
you have, but you shall have no ornament." For the science, he had, if
possible, even less tolerance, and compared the savans of Somerset House to
the boy who asked Confucius "how many stars in the sky?" Confucius replied,
"he minded things near him:" then said the boy, "how many hairs are there in
your eyebrows?" Confucius said, "he didn`t know and didn`t care."
Still speaking of the Americans, C. complained that they dislike the
coldness and exclusiveness of the English, and run away to France, andpgo with
their countrymen, and are amused, instead of manfully staying in London, and
confronting Englishmen, and acquiring their culture, who really have much to
teach them.
I told C. that I was easily dazzled, and was accustomed to concede
readily all that an Englishman would ask; I saw everywhere in the country
proofs of sense and spirit, and success of every sort: I like the people: they
are as good as they are handsome; they have everything, and can do everything:
but meantime, I surely know that, as soon as I return to Massachusetts, I
shall lapse at once into the feeling, which the geography of America
inevitably inspires, that we play the game with immense advantage; that there
and not here is the seat and centre of the British race: and that no skill or
activity can long compete with the prodigious natural advantages of that
country, in the hands of the same race; and that England, an old and exhausted
island, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in
her children. But this was a proposition which no Englishman of whatever
condition can easily entertain.
We left the train at Salisbury, and took a carriage to Amesbury, passing
by Old Sarum, a bare, treeless hill, once containing the town which sent two
members to Parliament, - now, not a hut; - and, arriving at Amesbury, stopped
at the George Inn. After dinner, we walked to Salisbury Plain. On the broad
downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing but Stonehenge,
which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide expanse, - Stonehenge
and the barrows, - which rose like green bosses about the plain, and a few
hayricks. On the top of a mountain, the old temple would not be more
impressive. Far and wide a few shepherds with their flocks sprinkled the
plain, and a bagman drove along the road. It looked as if the wide margin
given in this crowded isle to this primeval temple were accorded by the
veneration of the British race to the old egg out of which all their
ecclesiastical structures and history had proceeded. Stonehenge is a circular
colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet, and enclosing a second and third
colonnade within. We walked round the stones, and clambered over them, to wont
ourselves with their strange aspect and groupings, and found a nook sheltered
from the wind among them, where C. lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see
that just this simplest of all simple structures, - two upright stones and a
lintel laid across, - had long outstood all later churches, and all history,
and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet: these, and the
barrows, - mere mounds (of which there are a hundred and sixty within a circle
of three miles about Stonehenge), like the same mound on the plain of Troy,
which still makes good to the passing mariner on Hellespont the vaunt of Homer
and the fame of Achilles. Within the enclosure, grow buttercups, nettles, and,
all around, wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, thistle, and the
carpeting grass. Over us, larks were soaring and singing, - as my friend said,
"the larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched many
thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest stones, and
soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the inscrutable temple.
There are ninety-four stones, and there were once probably one hundred and
sixty. The temple is circular, and uncovered, and the situation fixed
astronomically, - the grand entrances here, and at Abury, being placed exactly
northeast, "as all the gates of the old cavern temples are." How came the
stones here? for these sarsens, or Druidical sandstones, are not found in this
neighborhood. The sacrificial stone, as it is called, is the only one in all
these blocks, that can resist the action of fire, and as I read in the books,
must have been brought one hundred and fifty miles.
On almost every stone we found the marks of the mineralogist`s hammer and
chisel. The nineteen smaller stones of the inner circle are of granite. I, who
had just come from Professor Sedgwick`s Cambridge Museum of megatheria and
mastodons, was ready to maintain that some cleverer elephants or mylodonta had
borne off and laid these rocks one on another. Only the good beasts must have
known how to cut a well-wrought tenon and mortise, and to smooth the surface
of some of the stones. The chief mystery is that any mystery should have been
allowed to settle on so remarkable a monument, in a country on which all the
muses have kept their eyes now for eighteen hundred years. We are not yet too
late to learn much more than is known of this structure. Some diligent
Fellowes or Layard will arrive, stone by stone, at the whole history, by that
exhaustive British sense and perseverance, so whimsical in its choice of
objects, which leaves its own Stonehenge, or Choir Gaur to the rabbits, whilst
it opens pyramids, and uncovers Nineveh. Stonehenge, in virtue of the
simplicity of its plan, and its good preservation, is as if new and recent;
and, a thousand years hence, men will thank this age for the accurate history
it will yet eliminate. We walked in and out, and took again and again a fresh
look at the uncanny stones. The old sphinx put our petty differences of
nationality out of sight. To these conscious stones we two pilgrims were alike
known and near. We could equally well revere their old British meaning. My
philosopher was subdued and gentle. In this quiet house of destiny, he
happened to say, "I plant cypresses wherever I go, and if I am in search of
pain, I cannot go wrong." The spot, the gray blocks, and their rude order,
which refuses to be disposed of, suggested to him the flight of ages, and the
succession of religions. The old times of England impress C. much: he reads
little, he says, in these last years, but "Acta Sanctorum," the fifty-three
volumes of which are in the "London Library." He finds all English history
therein. He can see, as he reads, the old saint of Iona sitting there, and
writing, a man to men. The Acta Sanctorum show plainly that the men of those
times believed in God, and in the immortality of the soul, as their abbeys and
cathedrals testify: now, even the puritanism is all gone. London is pagan. He
fancied that greater men had lived in England, than any of her writers; and,
in fact, about the time when those writers appeared, the last of these were
already gone.
We left the mound in the twilight, with the design to return the next
morning, and coming back two miles to our inn, we were met by little showers,
and late as it was, men and women were out attempting to protect their spread
windows. The grass grows rank and dark in the showery England. At the inn,
there was only milk for one cup of tea. When we called for more, the girl
brought us three drops. My friend was annoyed who stood for the credit of an
English inn, and still more, the next morning, by the dogcart, sole procurable
vehicle, in which we were to be sent to Wilton. I engaged the local antiquary,
Mr. Brown, to go with us to Stonehenge, on our way, and show us what he knew
of the "astronomical" and "sacrificial" stones. I stood on the last, and he
pointed to the upright, or rather, inclined stone, called the "astronomical,"
and bade me notice that its top ranged with the sky-line. "Yes." Very well.
Now, at the summer solstice, the sun rises exactly over the top of that stone,
and, at the Druidical temple at Abury, there is also an astronomical stone in
the same relative positions.
In the silence of tradition, this one relation to science becomes an
important clew; but we were content to leave the problem with the rocks. Was
this the "Giants` Dance" which Merlin brought from Killaraus, in Ireland, to
be Uther Pendragon`s monument to the British nobles whom Hengist slaughtered
here, as Geoffrey of Mon-mouth relates? or was it a Roman work, as Inigo
Jones explained to King James; or identical in design and style with the East
Indian temples of the sun; as Davies in the Celtic Researches maintains? Of
all the writers, Stukeley is the best. The heroic antiquary, charmed with the
geometric perfections of his ruin, connects it with the oldest monuments and
religion of the world, and, with the courage of his tribe, does not stick to
say, "the Deity who made the world by the scheme of Stonehenge." He finds that
the cursus^1 on Salisbury Plain stretches across the downs, like a line of
latitude upon the globe, and the meridian line of Stonehenge passes exactly
through the middle of this cursus. But here is the high point of the theory:
the Druids had the magnet; laid their courses by it; their cardinal points in
Stonehenge, Ambresbury, and elsewhere, which vary a little from true east, and
west, followed the variations of the compass. The Druids were Phoenicians. The
name of the magnet is lapis Heracleus, and Hercules was the god of the
Phoenicians. Hercules, in the legend, drew his bow at the sun, and the sun -
god gave him a golden cup, with which he sailed over the ocean. What was this,
but a compass-box? This cup or little boat, in which the magnet was made to
float on water, and so show the north, was probably its first form, before it
was suspended on a pin. But science was an arcanum, and, as Britain was a
Phoenician secret, so they kept their compass a secret, and it was lost with
the Tyrian commerce. The golden fleece, again, of Jason, was the compass, - a
bit of loadstone, easily supposed to be the only one in the world, and
therefore naturally awakening the cupidity and ambition of the young heroes of
a maritime nation to join in an expedition to obtain possession of this wise
stone. Hence the fable that the ship Argo was loquacious and oracular. There
is also some curious coincidence in the names. Apollodorus makes Magnes the
son of Aeolus, who married Nais. On hints like these, Stukeley builds again
the grand colonnade into historic harmony, and computing backward by the known
variations of the compass, bravely assigns the year 406 before Christ for the
date of the temple.
[Footnote 1: Connected with Stonehenge are an avenue and a cursus. The avenue
is a narrow road of raised earth, extending 594 yards in a straight line from
the grand entrance, then dividing into two branches, which led severally, to a
row of barrows; and to the cursus; - an artificially formed flat tract of
ground. This is half a mile northeast from Stonehenge, bounded by banks and
ditches, 3,036 yards long, by 110 broad]
For the difficulty of handling and carrying stones of this size, the like
is done in all cities, every day, with no other aid than horse power. I
chanced to see a year ago men at work on the substructure of a house in
Bowdoin Square, in Boston, swinging a block of granite the size of the largest
of the Stonehenge columns with an ordinary derrick. The men were common
masons, with paddies to help, nor did they think they were doing anything
remarkable. I suppose, there were as good men a thousand years ago. And we
wonder how Stonehenge was built and forgotten. After spending half an hour on
the spot, we set forth in our dogcart over the downs for Wilton, C. not
suppressing some threats and evil omens on the proprietors, for keeping these
broad plains a wretched sheep-walk, when so many thousands of English men
were hungry and wanted labor. But I heard afterwards that it is not an economy
to cultivate this land, which only yields one crop on being broken up, and is
then spoiled.
We came to Wilton and to Wilton Hall, - the renowned seat of the Earls of
Pembroke, a house known to Shakespeare and Massinger, the frequent home of Sir
Philip Sidney, where he wrote the Arcadia; where he conversed with Lord
Brooke, a man of deep thought, and a poet, who caused to be engraved on his
tombstone, "Here lies Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, the friend of Sir Philip
Sidney." It is now the property of the Earl of Pembroke, and the residence of
his brother, Sidney Herbert, Esq., and is esteemed a noble specimen of English
manor-hall. My friend had a letter from Mr. Herbert to his housekeeper, and
the house was shown. The state drawing-room is a double cube, 30 feet high,
by 30 feet wide, by 60 feet long: the adjoining room is a single cube, of 30
feet every way. Although these apartments and the long library were full of
good family portraits, Vandykes and others, and though there were some good
pictures, and a quadrangle cloister full of antique and modern statuary, - to
which C., catalogue in hand, did all too much justice, - yet the eye was still
drawn to the windows, to a magnificent lawn, on which grew the finest cedars
in England. I had not seen more charming grounds. We went out, and walked over
the estate. We crossed a bridge built by Inigo Jones over a stream, of which
the gardener did not know the name (Qu. Alph?), watched the deer; climbed to
the lonely sculptured summer house, on a hill backed by a wood; came down into
the Italian garden, and into a French pavilion, garnished with French busts;
and so again to the house, where we found a table laid for us with bread,
meats, peaches, grapes, and wine.
On leaving Wilton House, we took the coach for Salisbury. The Cathedral,
which was finished 600 years ago, has even a spruce and modern air, and its
spire is the highest in England. I know not why, but I had been more struck
with one of no fame at Coventry, which rises 300 feet from the ground, with
the lightness of a mullein-plant, and not at all implicated with the church.
Salisbury is now esteemed the culmination of the Gothic art in England, as the
buttresses are fully unmasked, and honestly detailed from the sides of the
pile. The interior of the Cathedral is obstructed by the organ in the middle,
acting like a screen. I know not why in real architecture the hunger of the
eye for length of line is so rarely gratified. The rule of art is that a
colonnade is more beautiful the longer it is, and that ad infinitum. And the
nave of a church is seldom so long that it need be divided by a screen.
We loitered in the church, outside the choir, whilst service was said.
Whilst we listened to the organ, my friend remarked, the music is good, and
yet not quite religious, but somewhat as if a monk were panting to some fine
Queen of Heaven. C. was unwilling, and we did not ask to have the choir shown
us, but returned to our inn, after seeing another old church of the place. We
passed in the train Clarendon Park, but could see little but the edge of a
wood, though C. had wished to pay closer attention to the birth-place of the
Decrees of Clarendon. At Bishopstoke we stopped, and found Mr. H., who
received us in his carriage, and took us to his house at Bishops Waltham.
On Sunday, we had much discourse on a very rainy day. My friends asked
whether there were any Americans? - any with an American idea, - any theory of
the right future of that country? Thus challenged, I bethought myself neither
of caucuses nor congress, neither of presidents nor of cabinet-ministers,
nor of such as would make of America another Europe. I thought only of the
simplest and purest minds; I said, "Certainly yes; - but those who hold it are
fanatics of a dream which I should hardly care to relate to your English ears,
to which it might be only ridiculous, - and yet it is the only true." So I
opened the dogma of no-government and non-resistance, and anticipated the
objections and the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, it is
true that I have never seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand
for this truth, and yet it is plain to me that no less valor than this can
command my respect. I can easily see the bankruptcy of the vulgar
musketworship, - though great men be musket-worshippers; - and `tis certain,
as God liveth, the gun that does not need another gun, the law of love and
justice alone, can effect a clean revolution. I fancied that one or two of my
anecdotes made some impression on C., and I insisted that the manifest
absurdity of the view to English feasibility could make no difference to a
gentleman; that as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop and spinage in
London or in Boston, the soul might quote Talleyrand, "Monsieur, je n`en vois
pas la necessite"^2 As I had thus taken in the conversation the saint`s part,
when dinner was announced, C. refused to go out before me, - "he was
altogether too wicked." I planted my back against the wall, and our host
wittily rescued us from the dilemma, by saying, he was the wickedest, and
would walk out first, then C. followed, and I went last.
[Footnote 2: "Mais, Monseigneur, il faut que j`existe."]
On the way to Winchester, whither our host accompanied us in the
afternoon, my friends asked many questions respecting American landscape,
forests, houses, - my house, for example. It is not easy to answer these
queries well. There I thought, in America, lies nature sleeping, overgrowing,
almost conscious, too much by half for man in the picture, and so giving a
certain tristesse, like the rank vegetation of swamps and forests seen at
night, steeped in dews and rains, which it loves; and on it man seems not able
to make much impression. There, in that great sloven continent, in high
Alleghany pastures, in the sea-wide, sky skirted prairie, still sleeps and
murmurs and hides the great mother, long since driven away from the trim
hedge-rows and over-cultivated garden of England. And, in England, I am
quite too sensible of this. Every one is on his good behavior, and must be
dressed for dinner at six. So I put off my friends with very inadequate
details, as best I could.
Just before entering Winchester, we stopped at the Church of Saint Cross,
and, after looking through the quaint antiquity, we demanded a piece of bread
and a draught of beer, which the founder, Henry de Blois, in 1136, commanded
should be given to every one who should ask it at the gate. We had both, from
the old couple who take care of the church. Some twenty people, every day,
they said, make the same demand. This hospitality of seven hundred years`
standing did not hinder C. from pronouncing a malediction on the priest who
receives 2000 pounds a year, that were meant for the poor, and spends a
pittance on this small beer and crumbs.
In the Cathedral I was gratified, at least by the ample dimensions. The
length of line exceeds that of any other English church; being 556 feet by 250
in breadth of transept. I think I prefer this church to all I have seen,
except Westminster and York. Here was Canute buried, and here Alfred the Great
was crowned and buried, and here the Saxon kings: and, later, in his own
church, William of Wykeham. It is very old: part of the crypt into which we
went down and saw the Saxon and Norman arches of the old church on which the
present stands, was built fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago. Sharon Turner
says, "Alfred was buried at Winchester, in the Abbey he had founded there, but
his remains were removed by Henry I. to the new Abbey in the meadows at Hyde,
on the northern quarter of the city, and laid under the high altar. The
building was destroyed at the Reformation, and what is left of Alfred`s body
now lies covered by modern buildings, or buried in the ruins of the old."^3
William of Wykeham`s shrine tomb was unlocked for us, and C. took hold of the
recumbent statue`s marble hands, and patted them affectionately, for he
rightly values the brave man who built Windsor, and this Cathedral, and the
School here, and New College at Oxford. But it was growing late in the
afternoon. Slowly we left the old house, and parting with our host, we took
the train for London.
[Footnote 3: "History of the Anglo-Saxons, I., 599.]
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