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98 by Hesiod in his Theogonia." Aubrey was twenty-two when he first saw that country.

"I never saw the country about Marlborough (he says) till Christmas, 1648, being then invited to Lord Francis Seymour's by the Hon. Mr. Charles Seymour.... The morrow after twelfth-day Mr. Charles Seymour and Sir William Button met with their packs of hounds at the Grey Wethers. These Downs look as if they were sown with great stones, very thick, and in a dusky evening they look like a flock of sheep.... 'Twas here that our game began, and the chase led us at length through the village of Avebury into the closes there, where I was wonderfully surprised at the sight of those vast stones, of which I had never heard before, as also at the mighty bank and graffe about it. I observed in the enclosures some segments of rude circles made with these stones, whence I concluded they had been in the old time complete. I left my company awhile, entertaining myself with a more delightful indagation, and then (cheered by the cry of the hounds) overtook the company, and went with them to Kennet, where was a good hunting dinner provided."

Nobody before, it seems, had noticed the stones at Avebury, or had troubled to say so, and Aubrey naturally boasted that they excelled Stonehenge "as a cathedral does a parish church." Afterwards he showed them to Charles II., who had heard the boast. And he loved to revisit them. When he came there hawking with Long, of Draycot Cerne, he wrote in elevation:

"Our sport was very good and in a romantic country, for the prospects are noble and vast, the downs stocked with numerous flocks of sheep, the turf rich and