Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/212

 154; ON THE " BELGIC DITCHES, trilithons ; and that stone so hard could only have been worked after the introduction of steel tools. As we know that " the maritime states " produced iron in the time of Ca3sar, it is clear that any hypothesis which does not carry back the origin of Stonehenge more than a century or two before the Christian era, will not be affected by the difficulty here suggested. Mr. Herbert's theory may be considered, in one point of view, as a modification of Rickman's. He supposes that Stonehenge, Avebury, and our other " megalithic monuments" were erected after the Romans had left the island; and he has exhibited no small acuteness and learning, in support of this startling hypothesis. According to his theory, the bards and other favourers of the old superstition returned from Ireland, whither they had been driven by the influence of Roman civilisation, and of Christianity ; heathenism, for a while, regained its ascendancy, and the enthusiasm awakened by the return to old habits and feelings, and by a sense of recovered independence, led to the erection of these mighty structures. Mr. Herbert skilfully avails himself of Rickman's arguments, and presses upon us the additional one, that the so-called Druidical temples, and other similar erections, are only to be found in Britain, or in countries closely connected with it, as Brittany ; and therefore must have been the results of causes operating partially, and not the general expression — the necessary outward manifestation — of a religion so widely diffused as the Druidical. Every candid reader will admit, that there is considerable weight in the argument last referred to. Do the following considerations supply us with a sufficient answer to it ? We know from Caesar, that Britain was looked upon by the Gauls, both as the great centre of Druidism, and as the country in which its peculiar doctrines originated ; " disciplina in Britannia reperta, atque inde in Gralliam translata esse exis- timatur ; et nunc qui diligentius eam rem cognoscere volant, plerumque illo discendi causa proficiscuntur." — B, G. 16. We might therefore expect to find in Britain, and such countries as were intimately connected with it, more marked traces of the peculiar structures which characterised this system, than are to be met with elsewhere. It seems also to be a fact, that, Avith the exception of Stonehenge, to which I shall shortly advert more particularly, all the larger Druidical