The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in
most authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the
last. The figure was at first circular, and there were at least
four rows or circles within one another. The main stones were
placed upright, and they were joined on the top by cross-stones,
laid from one to another, and fastened with vast mortises and
tenons. Length of time has so decayed them that not only most of
the cross-stones which lay on the top are fallen down, but many of
the upright also, notwithstanding the weight of them is so
prodigious great. How they came thither, or from whence (no stones
of that kind being now to be found in that part of England near it)
is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no
engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir
them.
Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreign countries,
as well as here, to move heavier weights than we find practicable
now. How else did Solomon's workmen build the battlement or
additional wall to support the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which
the Temple was built, which was all built of stones of Parian
marble, each stone being forty cubits long and fourteen cubits
broad, and eight cubits high or thick, which, reckoning each cubit
at two feet and a half of our measure (as the learned agree to do),
was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad, and twenty feet
thick?
These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr.
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