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 XVII. — Architecture in Great Britain. All that we have said in preceding chapters on the architecture of the Continent will, we trust, be found useful in enabling the reader to understand our own, and to recognise the chief characteristics which distinguish English from contemporary art on the continent of Europe. Architecture, like language, is the expression of national ideas and national peculiarities ; and the study of English history might be to no inconsiderable extent illustrated by an examination of the buildings belonging to each period under consideration. Each race which became dominant in Britain left its impress on the architecture of the time, and the gradual advance in civilisation was marked by a corresponding advance in the science of building. When Julius Caesar invaded Britain, in 55 B.C., the dwellings of the inhabitants were of the simplest descrip- tion : caves, mud huts, or circular houses of stone or wood with tapering roofs, through an aperture in the summit of which light was admitted and smoke emitted. It is there- fore at least possible that the remarkable collection of monolithic masses on Salisbury Plain, called Stonehenge (i. e. hanging or uplifted stones), with the appearance of which every child is familiar, may not have been erected by the same race of men as those who inhabited these dwellings. Stonehenge shows great experience in the handling of enormous masses of stone, and practice in the art of the mason. Many other " rude stone monuments," though none so advanced as works of art, exist in various parts of Britain ; but the date when they were raised and the history of their builders still remain obscure.