Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/173

23, 1872.

CATTERED about in various parts of the habitable globe we come upon many monuments ingeniously constructed of unhewn stone, and testifying to the powers and energy of unknown men whose very memory, but for these objects, would have died out entirely. We know who built the Acropolis of Athens and S. Peter's at Rome. We know something about the Pharaohs, whose pyramids and temples are the great wonders of Egypt. But the builders of Stonehenge and Avebury remain unknown to us. History is silent as to the origin of these monuments. No inscription records the date of their erection, or the name and titles of the founder, and from time immemorial two things, and two things only, have been held to be certain about them: that they are of immense antiquity, and that little else can ever be found out respecting them. Mr. Fergusson has now come forward to add to the literary laurels which he has so well won such an additional chaplet as may be culled on this unpromising field; and he begins by flatly contradicting both the tenets above referred to. According to him, none of the various rude stone monuments are of great age, and a great deal may be found out with regard to them. We are bound to say that in our opinion Mr. Fergusson has proved the latter proposition more clearly than the former and more startling one. He has unquestionably shown, by diligently collecting and comparing the various data available for such a purpose, that a ray of light—clouded and indistinct, perhaps—but still enough to penetrate the dense gloom of our ignorance, may be cast on the subject; but he has not done more than proved it to be a tenable hypothesis that the stone circles, and cromlechs, and other monuments to which we so readily ascribe an enormous antiquity are the products of comparatively recent times.

Mr. Fergusson sets out by stating fairly the conclusions to which he desires to conduct his readers, and to which he has been led by his observations. They are three. "First, that the rude stone monuments with which we are concerned are generally sepulchral, or connected, directly or indirectly, with the rites of the dead; secondly, that they are not temples in any usual or appropriate sense of the term; and, lastly, that they were generally erected by partially civilised races after they had come in contact with the Romans, and most of them may be considered as belonging to the first ten centuries of the Christian era." His general line of argument is to show the close