Page:Surrey Archaeological Collections Volume 1.djvu/107

 wholly covered with gold and silver, in the midst of a circle of twelve stones, which were only covered with brass, on which were carved figures. The old Irish, we are told, on the election of their Tanaists, used to deliver a wand to him whom they intended to raise to that dignity, he having previously ascended a high stone; and as soon as he had received the wand, he descended, and turned himself round thrice forward and thrice backward. The inferior stones surrounding your own Mora-stone seem to have all vanished before the requirements of an increasing population, and the improvements in the construction of our dwellings. But a reverence deeply seated in the minds of the people must have kept the principal and kingly stone from profanation or destruction; and the sacred purposes to which it was appropriated seem attested by tradition and history, as it is thus amply confirmed by the reasons we can adduce from past ages, and by farther comparison with similar existing monuments near at hand. As these, as well as their immediate neighbourhood, are curious and continually illustrative, their explanation will be here not misplaced.

The first of them which I adduce, is the famed London stone, the last fragment of which is now preserved within a stone pedestal, walled into the south side of St. Swithin's Church, in 'Cannon-street. This stone has undergone many changes of situation, as I learn from a note in Thorn's edition of "Stowe's Chronicles," Lond. 1842, 8vo. p. 84. It formerly stood on the opposite or south side of the street; was in 1742 removed to the edge of the kerbstone on the north side; and in 1798, incased, at the instance of Mr. Thomas Marden, printer, of Sherburn-lane, by the parish officers, as it is now seen. Its fortune seems as various nearly as these migrations; but the weight of Camden's opinion seems to have united all