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Updated: June 17, 2025
Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. 'The mind is its own place'; nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey.
He came from the sea and at last returned to it, but meanwhile he did great works on land, one of which is said to have been the building of Stonehenge. This is the way, as the old legends tell, in which the vast stones of Stonehenge came to be placed on Salisbury Plain.
Apart from the moral considerations suggested by it, Stonehenge is not very well worth seeing.
Stonehenge is a circular colonnade with a diameter of a hundred feet, and enclosing a second and third colonnade within. Within the enclosure grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, thistle, and the carpeting grass.
I found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the mysterious monuments. One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge had a significance for me which renders it memorable in my personal experience. As we drove over the barren plain, one of the party suddenly exclaimed, "Look! Look! See the lark rising!"
I am not sure that a misty, lowering day would not have better suited Stonehenge, as the dreary midpoint of the great, desolate, trackless plain; not literally trackless, however, for the London and Exeter Road passes within fifty yards of the ruins, and another road intersects it.
The next people to these Druidical Celts to occupy these plains were Britons and the ruins of some of their villages are still to be found. Then came the Romans, and as usual they left their mark. North of the stones of Stonehenge, about a quarter of a mile, is still to be found the ruins of a chariot race course recalling scenes from "Ben Hur."
Then the people took the dead king numerous folk and forth him carried the stiff-minded men into Stonehenge, and there buried him, by his dear brother; side by side there they lie both.
It is a very curious life that this artist leads, in this great solitude, and haunting Stonehenge like the ghost of a Druid; but he is a brisk little man, and very communicative on his one subject. Mr. Hinchman rode with us over the plain, and pointed out Salisbury spire, visible close to Stonehenge.
The spectator wonders to see art and contrivance, and a regular and even somewhat intricate plan, beneath all the uncouth simplicity of this arrangement of rough stones; and certainly, whatever was the intellectual and scientific advancement of the people who built Stonehenge, no succeeding architects will ever have a right to triumph over them; for nobody's work in after times is likely to endure till it becomes a mystery as to who built it, and how, and for what purpose.
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