lighted his cigar. It was pleasant to see, that, just this simplest of all simple structures, -- two upright stones and a lintel laid across, -- had long outstood all later churches, and all history, and were like what is most permanent on the face of the planet: these, and the barrows, -- mere mounds, (of which there are a hundred and sixty within a circle of three miles about Stonehenge,) like the same mound on the plain of Troy, which still makes good to the passing mariner on Hellespont, the vaunt of Homer and the fame of Achilles. Within the enclosure, grow buttercups, nettles, and, all around, wild thyme, daisy, meadowsweet, goldenrod, thistle, and the carpeting grass. Over us, larks were soaring and singing, -- as my friend said, "the larks which were hatched last year, and the wind which was hatched many thousand years ago." We counted and measured by paces the biggest stones, and soon knew as much as any man can suddenly know of the inscrutable temple. There are ninety-four stones, and there were once probably one hundred and sixty. The temple is circular, and uncovered, and the situation fixed astronomically, -- the grand entrances here, and at Abury, being placed exactly northeast, "as all the gates of the old cavern temples are.
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