We were now practically at the end of Berkshire, and perhaps the River
Kennett, over which we passed, and on which John o' Gaunt of Lancaster
had given free fishery rights to Hungerford town, might have formed the
boundary between that county and Wiltshire. We could not hear of any
direct road to Stonehenge, so we left Hungerford by the Marlborough road
with the intention of passing through Savernake Forest---said to be the
finest forest in England, and to contain an avenue of fine beech trees,
in the shape of a Gothic archway, five miles long. The forest was about
sixteen miles in circumference, and in the centre was a point from which
eight roads diverged. We had walked about a mile on our way when we came
to some men working on the roads, who knew the country well, and
strongly advised us not to cross the forest, but to walk over the downs
instead. We decided to follow their advice, for the difficulty that
first occurred to us was that when we got to the eight roads there might
be no one there to direct us on our further way; and we quite saw the
force of the remark of one of the men when he said it was far better to
get lost on the down, where we could see for miles, than amongst the
bushes and trees in the forest. They could only give us general
information about the best way to get to Stonehenge, for it was a long
way off, but when we got to the downs we must keep the big hill well to
the left, and we should find plenty of roads leading across them. We
travelled as directed, and found that the "big hill" was the Inkpen
Beacon, over a thousand feet above sea-level, and the highest chalk down
cliff in England; while the "plenty of roads" were more in the nature of
unfenced tracks; still, we were fortunate in finding one leading in the
right direction for Stonehenge and almost straight.
The Marlborough Downs which adjoined Salisbury Plain are very extensive,
occupying together three-fifths of the county of Wilts, being accurately
described as "ranges of undulating chalk cliffs almost devoid of trees,
and devoted almost exclusively to the pasturage of sheep from remote
ages." These animals, our only companions for miles, can live almost
without water, which is naturally very scarce on chalk formations, since
the rain when it falls is absorbed almost immediately. Very few
shepherds were visible, but there must have been some about, for every
now and then their dogs paid us rather more attention than we cared for,
especially my brother, who when a small boy had been bitten by one,
since which time not much love had been lost between him and dogs. As
there were no fences to the roads, we walked on the grass, which was
only about an inch deep. Sheep had been pastured on it from time
immemorial, and the constant biting of the surface had encouraged the
side, or undergrowth, which made our walking easy and pleasant; for it
was like walking on a heavy Turkey carpet though much more springy. The
absence of trees and bushes enabled us to distinguish the presence of
ancient earth-works, but whether they were prehistoric, Roman, Dane, or
Saxon we did not know. Occasionally we came to sections of the downs
that were being brought under cultivation, the farms appearing very
large. In one place we saw four ploughs at work each with three horses,
while the farmer was riding about on horseback. We inquired about the
wages from one of the farm hands, who told us the men got about 9s. per
week, and the women who worked in the fields were paid eightpence per
day. Possibly they got some perquisites in addition, as it seemed a very
small amount, scarcely sufficient to make both ends meet.
We had been walking quickly for more than four hours without
encountering a single village, and were becoming famished for want of
food; but the farmer's man told us we should come to one where there was
a public-house when we reached the River Avon by following the
directions he gave us. At Milston, therefore, we called for the
refreshments which we so badly needed, and quite astonished our
caterers, accustomed even as they were to country appetites, by our
gastronomical performances on that occasion.
We were very much surprised when we learned that the small but pretty
village of Milston, where we were now being entertained, was the
birthplace of Joseph Addison, the distinguished essayist and politician,
who, with his friend Steele, founded the _Spectator_, and contributed
largely to the _Tatler_, and whose tragedy _Cato_ aroused such
enthusiasm that it held the boards of Drury Lane for thirty-five
nights--a great achievement in his time. As an essayist Addison had no
equal in English literature, and to his writings may be attributed all
that is sound and healthy in modern English thought. In our long walk we
met with him first at Lichfield, where at the Grammar School he received
part of his early education, and where, on one occasion, he had barred
out the schoolmaster. In the cathedral we saw his father's monument--he
was Dean of Lichfield Cathedral--and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where
he completed his education, we again encountered remembrances of him--we
saw a delightful retreat called after him, "Addison's Walk." On our
journey farther south, when we passed through Lostwithiel, we were
reminded that he was also a politician, for he represented that place in
parliament. His father was Rector of Milston when Joseph was born, in
1672. He was chiefly remembered in our minds, however, for his _Divine
Poems_, published in 1728, for we had sung some of these in our early
childhood, until we knew them off by heart, and could still recall his
beautiful hymn on gratitude beginning:
When all Thy mercies, oh my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love, and praise.
Some of his hymns, which were of more than ordinary merit, were said to
have been inspired by his youthful surroundings. Salisbury Plain, with
its shepherds and their sheep, must have constantly appeared before him
then, as they were immediately before us now, and would no doubt be in
his mind when he wrote:
The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd's care;
His presence shall my wants supply,
And guard me with a watchful eye;
My noonday walks He shall attend,
And all my midnight hours defend.
And then there was his magnificent paraphrase of the nineteenth Psalm:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens--a shining frame--
Their great Original proclaim.
Th' unwearied sun from day to day.
Doth his Creator's power display.
And publishes to every land
The work of an Almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail.
The Moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening Earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll.
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In Reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice;
For ever singing as they shine,
"The Hand that made us is divine."
After resting a short time and carefully writing down the instructions
given us as to how to reach Stonehenge, and the way thence to Amesbury,
we resumed our journey; and near the place where we crossed the River
Avon we had the first indication of our proximity to Stonehenge by the
sight of an enormous stone lying in the bed of the stream, which we were
told was like those we should find at Stonehenge. It was said to be one
that the Druids could not get across the stream owing to its great size
and weight, and so they had to leave it in the river. The country became
still more lonely as we walked across Salisbury Plain, and on a dark wet
night it might quite come up to the description given of it by Barham in
the _Ingoldsby Legends_ in "The Dead Drummer, a Legend of Salisbury
Plain," the first verse of which runs:
Oh, Salisbury Plain is bleak and bare,
At least so I've heard many people declare,
For I fairly confess I never was there;--
Not a shrub nor a tree, not a bush can you see;
No hedges, no ditches, no gates, no stiles,
Much less a house, or a cottage for miles;--
It's a very sad thing to be caught in the rain
When night's coming on upon Salisbury Plain.
Cruikshank's illustration of the legend represents a finger-post on the
Plain without a bush or a tree or a house being visible, one finger of
the post being marked "Lavington" and the other "Devizes." The Dead
Drummer is leaning against the post, with two men nervously approaching
him in the dark, while a flash of lightning betrays the bare plain and
the whole scene to the terrified men.
Hannah More, who was born in 1745, wrote a large number of stories
chiefly of a religious character, and was said to have earned £30,000 by
her writings, amongst them a religious tract bearing the title of "The
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain." We found he was not a mythical being, for
David Saunders, the shepherd referred to, was a real character, noted
for his homely wisdom and practical piety, and, as Mrs. More described
him, was quite a Christian Hero. He resided at Great Cherwell, near
Lavington, where his house was still pointed out to visitors. A typical
shepherd of Salisbury Plain was afterwards pictured by another lady, and
described as "wearing a long black cloak falling from neck to heels, a
round felt hat, like a Hermes cap without the wings to it, and sometimes
a blue milk-wort or a yellow hawk-weed in the brim, and walking with his
plume-tailed dog in front leading his sheep, as was customary in the
East and as described in the Scriptures--"the sheep follow him, for they
know his voice."
We did not see one answering to that description as we crossed the
Plain, but no doubt there were such shepherds to be found.
The sky had been overcast that day, and it was gloomy and cloudy when we
reached Stonehenge. Without a house or human being in sight, the utter
loneliness of the situation seemed to add to our feelings of wonder and
awe, as we gazed upon these gigantic stones, the remains of prehistoric
ages in England. We had passed through the circles of stones known as
the "Standing Stones of Stenness" when we were crossing the mainland of
the Orkney Islands on our way to John o' Groat's, but the stones we now
saw before us were much larger. There had been two circles of stones at
Stonehenge, one inside the other, and there was a stone that was
supposed to have been the sacrificial stone, with a narrow channel in it
to carry off the blood of the human victims slain by the Druids. In that
desolate solitude we could almost imagine we could see the priests as
they had been described, robed in white, with oak crowns on their heads,
and the egg of a mythical serpent round their necks; we could hear the
cries and groans of the victims as they were offered up in sacrifice to
the serpent, and to Bel (the sun). Tacitus said they held it right to
stain their altars with the blood of prisoners taken in war, and to seek
to know the mind of the gods from the fibres of human victims. One very
large stone outside the circles was called the "Friar's Heel," the
legend stating that when the devil was busy erecting Stonehenge he made
the observation to himself that no one would ever know how it had been
done. This remark was overheard by a friar who was hiding amongst the
stones, and he replied in the Wiltshire dialect, "That's more than thee
can tell," at which the devil took up a big stone to throw at him, but
he ran away as fast as he could, so that the stone only just grazed his
heel, at the place where it now stands.
[Illustration: DRUIDICAL REMAINS, STONEHENGE.]
We walked about these great stones wondering how they could have been
raised upright in those remote times, and how the large stones could
have been got into position, laid flat on the tops of the others. Many
of the stones had fallen down, and others were leaning over, but when
complete they must have looked like a circle of open doorways. The
larger stones, we afterwards learned, were Sarsen Stones or Grey
Wethers, of a siliceous sandstone, and were natural to the district, but
the smaller ones, which were named the blue stones, were quite of a
different character, and must have been brought from a considerable
distance. If the ancient Welsh story could be believed, the blue stones
were brought over in ships from Ireland after an invasion of that
country under the direction of Merlin the Wizard, and were supposed to
be mystical stones with a medicinal value. As to the time of the
erection of these stones, we both agreed to relegate the matter to the
mists of antiquity. Some thought that because Vespasian's Camp was on
Amesbury Hill, Stonehenge might have been built by the Romans in the
time of Agricola, but others, judging perhaps from the ancient tombs in
the neighbourhood, thought it might date backwards as far as 2,000 years
B.C. Nearly all agreed that it was a temple of the worshippers of the
sun and might even have been erected by the Phoenicians, who must have
known how the Egyptians raised much heavier stones than these. By some
Stonehenge was regarded as the Round Temple to Apollo in the land of the
Hyperboreans, mentioned by Hecatoens in the sixth century B.C., and
after the Phoenicians it was supposed to have been used by the Greeks,
who followed them as traders with the British tin mines. According to
this theory, the Inner Ellipse or Horseshoe of Blue Stone was made by
them, the Druids adopting it as their temple at a much later date.
[Illustration: STONEHENGE.]
"Amongst the ruling races of prehistoric times the father sun-god was
the god on the grey white horse, the clouds, and it was this white
horse--the sun-god of the limestone, flint, and chalk country---which
was the god of Stonehenge, the ruins of which describe the complete
ritual of this primeval worship. The worshippers of the sun-god who
built this Temple must, it was thought, have belonged to the Bronze Age,
which theory was supposed to have been confirmed by the number of round
barrow tombs in the neighbourhood. It was also noted that the white
sun-horse was still worshipped and fed daily at Kobé, in Japan."
Stonehenge had been visited by Pepys, who described the stones in his
_Diary_ as being "as prodigious as any tales as I had ever heard of
them, and worth going this journey to see"; and King Charles II had
counted them over several times, but could not bring them twice to the
same number, which circumstance probably gave rise to the legend that no
two people ever counted the number alike, so of course we did not
attempt to count them. But the king's head must have been uneasy at the
time he counted them, as it was after the Battle of Worcester, when he
was a fugitive, retreating across the country in disguise and hidden by
his friends until he could reach the sea-coast of Sussex, and escape by
ship from England. One of his hiding-places was Heale House, about four
miles from Stonehenge, where the lady of the house had hidden him in
what was known as the "Priest's Hole," arrangements having been made for
some friends to meet him at Stonehenge, and accompany him a stage
farther towards the south. His friends, however, had been delayed a
little on their way, so they did not reach Stonehenge at the appointed
hour; and Charles whiled away the time by counting and recounting the
stones.
Cheshire was formerly noted for the great number of landowners of the
same name as the parishes in which they resided, such as Leigh of Leigh,
Dutton of Dutton, Antrobus of Antrobus. The last-named squire had left
Antrobus and gone to reside at Amesbury in Wiltshire, letting his
mansion in Cheshire and the land attached to it, as a farm, to a tenant
named Wright. This Mr. Wright was an uncle of ours, whom we had often
visited at Antrobus. The elder of his two sons, who followed him as
tenant of the farm, told us a story connected with the old Hall there.
He and his brother when they were boys slept in the same bed, and one
morning they were having a pushing match, each trying, back to back, to
push the other out of bed. He was getting the worst of the encounter
when he resolved to make one more great effort, and placed his feet
against the wall which was near his side of the bed; but instead of
pushing his brother out, he and his brother together pushed part of the
wall out, and immediately he found himself sitting on a beam with his
legs hanging outside over the moat or garden, having narrowly escaped
following the panel. The stability of these old timber-built halls,
which were so common in Cheshire, depended upon the strong beams with
which they were built, the panels being only filled in with light
material such as osiers plastered over with mud; and it was one of these
that had been pushed out. The old mansion was shortly afterwards taken
down and replaced by an ordinary red-brick building. We had often
wondered what sort of a place Amesbury was, where the Squire of Antrobus
had gone to reside, and had decided to go there, although it was rather
out of our way for Salisbury, our next stage. We found that Stonehenge
was included in his estate as well as Amesbury Abbey, where he lived,
and Vespasian's Hill. When we came in sight of the abbey, we were quite
surprised to find it so large and fine a mansion, without any visible
trace of the ancient abbey which once existed there, and we considered
that the lines of Sir Edmund Antrobus, Bart., had fallen in pleasant
places when he removed here from the damper atmosphere of Cheshire, and
that he had adopted the wisest course as far as health was concerned. We
had thought of calling at the abbey, but as it was forty-nine years
since he had left our neighbourhood and he had died in the year 1830, we
could not muster up sufficient courage to do so. We might too have seen
a fine portrait of the old gentleman, which we heard was hanging up in
one of the rooms in the abbey, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, a friend
of George IV, and President of the Royal Academy, who had also painted
the portraits of most of the sovereigns of Europe reigning in his time,
and who died in the same year as Sir Edmund.
Amesbury Abbey formerly belonged to the Duke of Queensberry, who made
great additions to it from the plans of the celebrated architect Inigo
Jones, who designed the famous Banqueting Hall at Whitehall in London
and the fine gateway of St. Mary's, Oxford. He was known as "the English
Palladio" because he adopted the style of Andrea Palladio, a celebrated
Italian architect of the sixteenth century. He was responsible for the
two Palladian pillars attached to the quaint and pretty entrance gates
to the Abbey Park, and for the lovely Palladian bridge that spanned the
River Avon, which flowed through the grounds, forming a favourite resort
for wild ducks, kingfishers, herons, and other birds. Inigo Jones was a
staunch Royalist, who suffered severely during the Civil War, and died
in 1652. The park was not a very large one, but was very pretty, and
contained the famous Amesbury Hill, which was covered with fine trees on
the slope towards the river; some of which had been arranged in the form
of a diamond, partly concealing a cave now known as the Diamond Cave,
but formerly belonging to the Druids, as all the sunrises would be
visible before the intervening trees were planted. This cave was the
favourite resort of John Gay, the poet, who loved to write there. He was
a great friend of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, who then owned
the Amesbury estate, was the author of the _Beggar's Opera_, published
in 1727, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey.
[Illustration: THE CAVE IN THE DIAMOND.]
The church had been heavily restored in 1853, and one of its former
vicars had been a famous man in his day according to the following
account from the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1789.