Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/34

8 groundless will be put forward again, or, if promulgated, that they will be listened to in future. The one excuse for them hitherto has been that their authors have been deprived of all their usual sources of information in this matter. It is not too much to assert that there is not one single passage in any classical author which can be construed as alluding directly or indirectly to the megalithic remains on these isles or on the continent. With all their learning and industry, the antiquaries of the last century could only find one passage which, with all their misapplied ingenuity, they could pervert to their purposes. It was this—in his second book, Diodorus, quoting from Hecatæus, mentions that in an island, not less in size than Sicily, and opposite to Celtica, there existed among the Hyperboreans a circular temple magnificently adorned. Stukeley and his followers immediately jumped to the conclusion that the island not less than Sicily and opposite Gaul must be England, and the circular temple Stonehenge, which was consequently dedicated to Apollo and the serpent Python, and our forefathers were the Hyperboreans, and our intercourse with Greece clear and frequent. It is marvellous what a super- structure was raised on such a basis. But against it may be urged that the whole of the second book of Diodorus is dedicated solely to a description of Asia. In the preceding chapter he describes the Amazons, who, if they ever existed, certainly lived in that quarter of the globe. In the following chapters he describes Arabia, and even in this one (xlvii.) he speaks of the Hyperboreans as inhabiting the northern parts of Asia. By the utmost latitude of interpretation we might assume this island to have been in the Baltic—Œisel probably, Gothland possibly, but certainly not further west. It is impossible Diodorus could be mistaken in the matter, for in his fifth book he describes the British Isles in their proper place, and with a very considerable degree of accuracy. But, after all, what does it amount to? In this island there was a circular temple. We are not told whether it was of wood or of stone, whether hypæthral, or roofed, or vaulted, and certainly there is not a shadow of a hint that it was composed of a circle of rude stones like those in this