Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/186

 Plain; and Saturn by the great blocks at Stonehenge. The Druids, who brought Eastern learning to Europe, were great astronomers, Mr. Duke says, and represented numerical and astronomical cycles by these Avebury stones. He will have it that the numerical cycles were compounds of the mystic number four, sacred as an emblem of the four letters by which the name of the Supreme Being was expressed in the early languages. The one hundred stones of the outer ring were four, twenty-five times repeated, and the four hundred of the avenue one hundred four times repeated, whilst the thirty stones of the outer ring of each double circle represented the lunar cycle, or days of the month, and the twelve of the inner the months of the year.

In this way Wiltshire became a great fossil almanack, and the priests, perambulating the county before Moore and Zadkiel had conferred their boons on the world, could know and reckon the proper days for observing religious festivals. After all these puzzle-brain theories, the result is no great enlargement of knowledge. They just leave us with a confused notion that the circles might have had some obscure astronomical meaning, and that is all. It is even uncertain whether Silbury Hill was cut into its present geometrical form, or was built up by manual labour. It is nearly as high as St. Michael's Mount, covering more than five acres of land; and it has been calculated that even in these days navigators could not build it up for less than twenty thousand pounds. It was long thought to be the burial mound of the founder of Avebury; but it has been twice opened—first in 1777, and afterwards in 1849, and no trace of any interment could be found. Many think its name implies that it was sacred to the god Sul or Sol, as St. Anne's Hill was to Tanaris, the god of thunder. There is no tradition about Avebury; but the story at Stonehenge is that no one can count the stones twice alike. When Charles the Second was waiting there for the friends who were to conduct him to the coast of Sussex, where a vessel was lying off for him, he counted the stones to beguile the time, and refuted the vulgar error to his own satisfaction.

The old legend of Stonehenge was, that the stones were brought from Africa to Ireland by giants, and that Merlin, by his incantations, floated them across the sea to please King Ambrosius, the last British king, who wished to commemorate the massacre on Salisbury Plain of Vortigen and three hundred of his nobles by Hengist the Saxon. In the middle ages Stonehenge was called "the Giant's Dance." At Stanton Drew, a Druidical ruin near Bristol, the legends of the old stone-rings grow more grotesque. A giant is said to have thrown one of the stones from a neighbouring hill, and the chief circle is supposed to consist of the petrified bodies of a wicked wedding party, who would dance on Sunday, and to whom the Devil presented himself as piper, leading them a pretty dance, and ending by leaving them turned into pillars of stone.

Glancing on through Wiltshire, the crow rests on the highest weathercock of Devizes, the old town, so called, as tradition says, from its having been formerly divided between the king and the bishop. There is a curious inscription on the market cross, which records a warning to dishonest traders. In 1753 a woman, named Ruth Pierce, came with two neighbours from the Vale of Pewsey, to buy, with their combined money, a sack of wheat. When her companions paid Ruth did not lay down her money, though she asserted she had. They loudly accused her, and she then wished she might drop down dead if she had not paid. She had scarcely uttered the words before she fell down and expired; and in one of her clenched hands, the missing money was found.

It was the Bear Inn at Devizes, that the father of Sir Thomas Lawrence kept; and here the handsome boy learnt to draw likenesses and recite poetry. The father was a restless, desultory man, who had been a solicitor, a poet, an artist, an exciseman: "everything by turns, and nothing long." His life had been a web of unfinished schemes and incomplete studies. Proud of his son, he used to appear in powdered periwig and clean ruffles, to ask his guests whether Tom should recite to them from the poets, or draw their likenesses? Garrick used always to stop at the Bear, to hear the speeches Tom had learned since the last time; Prince Hoare, Sheridan, Wilkes, and Lord Kenyon, all praised and patronised the pretty boy who had painted his first portrait at six. Lord Kenyon used to describe the door bursting open, and the child dashing in riding on a stick. He was asked if he could take the gentleman's likeness? "That I can," said the boy, "and very like too." The restless father soon threw up the posting-house, and settled at Bath: where Tom became renowned for his crayon likenesses, and his portrait of Mrs. Siddons.

The crow from the top of Roundway Hill looks down on the scene of the defeat of Sir William Waller by Lord Wilmot in 1643, of which Clarendon has left us a fine sketch. After the battle of Lansdown, the royalists under the Marquis of Hertford and Prince Maurice, fell back on Devizes, followed by Waller, who invaded the town and erected batteries. The town was open then, without the least defence but small hedges and ditches, in which cannon were planted. The avenues were barricaded to stop the puritan cavalry. The Earl of Crawford, trying to send powder into the town, was driven off with the loss of his cannon. The town was in imminent danger. The musketeers had only one hundred and fifty pounds weight of match left; but they collected all the bed cords and beat and boiled them in saltpetre; they then took heart, Lord Wilmot being at hand. He soon arrived with fifteen hundred horse and two small field pieces, which he discharged, to give notice to the town of his arrival. In the meanwhile Waller was too confident; he had refused terms to the cavaliers, and had written to the parliament, to say that by the next post he would