indeed, to its precise or positive age, but to its age in relation to the period when the Romans occupied Britain.

Our question, then, is this—Does the position of the barrows in reference to Stonehenge, enable us to infer that they have been located with a special view to the temple which they surround so numerously?  In answering this question we may at once admit that no regular order of position is observable.  They do not appear to be placed in concentric lines, or avenues.  This, however, will at once strike an observer, that the eminences rather than the depressions or hollows between the hills have been chosen as sites for these sepulchral mounds.  The instances are very rare indeed in which barrows are to be found in any of the numerous little valleys where they would be out of sight.

But more decided evidence than this is of course needed.  And for such evidence we have not far to seek.  The pedestrian may obtain it without any great difficulty.  Let him visit, as I have done myself, every barrow on the surrounding plain within the above-mentioned radius, and then mount to the summit of each, whether it happens to be a bowl or bell-shaped barrow, or any of the more elevated tumuli, and I can promise him a view, in almost every instance, of the old stones from the top.  There are indeed a few exceptions, but only of such a nature as in fact to “prove the rule.”  In some cases plantations, or similar modern intervening objects, hide the view.  One or two cases also I noticed in which a barrow in the foreground obstructed the view from one further back.  But this was not, as I think, that the later barrow-builders acted uncourteously towards the earlier ones, but simply that they did it inconsiderately—they did not notice that they were thus obstructing the line of view.  Again, there are other cases in which you do not perhaps get the view from the base of the barrow, but as you ascend to the top, to your surprise and pleasure you find the grand old stones suddenly burst into sight.  But do there still remain a few instances unaccounted for?  There are a few, but they are very few, and I do not think we need feel the slightest difficulty in explaining these exceptional cases.  Bear in mind that these barrows were the burying places, not of the common people, but of the chieftains and other distinguished persons, as is evidenced by their contents.  They thus represent in all probability a considerable lapse of time, during which the deceased bodies were conveyed—some it may be from long distances—to this grand unfenced cemetery.  It is therefore very probable that the interments may have occupied a considerable number of years, and may have, in some instances, even preceded the time-honoured temple of Stonehenge.  But I again repeat that these exceptions are very few in number, nor do they in any degree shake the conclusion, which really is irresistible, that these said barrows do not occupy chance positions, but that the selection of the sites, as they became needed, was governed by a sacred feeling, such as even heathens may have, that they would wish the ashes of their beloved dead to repose in view of the temple where they worshipped in their lifetime.

But there still remains to be mentioned another fact which, added to what has gone before, seems to render the evidence in favour of the pre-Roman antiquity little short of demonstrative.  It is this.  On the western side of the temple there were formerly several barrows, now, I am sorry to say, obliterated by the ruthless plough, which were opened first by Dr. Stukeley, and afterwards re-opened by Sir R. C. Hoare, in one of which were found numerous fragments, not only of the “sarsens,” which would not have been so conclusive, but also of the so-called “blue stones,” i.e., the igneous stones of the syenitic or green stone