The next instance we have, and one perhaps better fixed in the memory than its more sacred precursor, is contained in the tenth Iliad; I allude to the adventure of Ulysses and Diomed. Every circumstance depicted by the old bard confirms in our minds the notions of the dignity, and the high fame attached to the daring wight that should undertake so high an emprise as the Pylian chief invites him to, by all the encomiums and soldierly incitives he can bring to his camp-tried memory. He assembles the chiefs, all heroes of eminent note, and on demanding,

"Oh friends! hath no Achaian here such trust
In his own prowess, as to venture forth
Among our haughty Trojans? He, perchance,
Might on the borders of their host surprise
Some wandering adversary, or might learn
Their consultations."-Cowper.

Diomed and many other brave leaders assert their claim for the privilege so gallantly to be won and so nobly to be rewarded:

"should he at last return

Secure, his recompense will be renown
Extensive as the heav'ns, and fair reward."-Cowper.

At the time this is occurring in the camp of Agamemnon, a similar scene is passing in that of Priam: composed of people of a different origin, but denoting, by the address of the prince, a like value for the services of a like adventurer on their own side. But,

with the excusable partiality of the Greek, Homer makes the Trojan adventurer to be actuated by less worthy motives, although the qualifications requisite and the character to be gained are the same.

"Who for such recompense as shall requite His courage gloriously, will undertake, And with good faith perform what I require?" &c.---Cowper. But at the same time that we applaud the poet for giving success to the more generous aspirant, yet none but a conclave of midnight murderers would at this time approve the manner of their execution of their noble task. Certes, the bright days of British chivalry would have blushed to have recorded

Antiquity is filled with instances of personal risk and daring, always accounted noble, for the purposes of information and espionage to circumvent or despoil an enemy. Virgil, who although the mere imitator as it respects the invention of his story, may perhaps be admitted as an attestor of the honour of the practice. Ascanius, in the book that contains the beautiful episode of Nisus and Euryalus, thus closes his speech, animating the brother heroes:

"My peace shall be committed to thy care;
And to thy conduct my concerns in war."

Polybius mentions one Hannibal, a Rhodian, a man of distinction, who gained reputation with his own, and envy from the opposing army, by his bold and artful conduct in managing a correspondence with the Lilybeans and Carthaginians, through the midst of the Roman fleet. And Tacitus represents the noble and generous Germanicus, as a disguised spy in his own camp, collecting the opinions of his soldiers. But perhaps the most notorious example is that of Zopyrus at the siege of Babylon, by Darius, who added desertion to that of espial; (see Herodotus's " Thalia," clx.) and yet Darius held that he was exceeded by no Persian since Cyrus.

As the love of glory and the desire of gold, like all the family of the Virtues and the Vices, have moved in the human heart in parallel lines, I have no doubt that many instances of base cupidity have occurred to stain the general character even in antiquity; but still I think that the office of spy was then generally that of great and glorious occasions. Our own Alfred

has sanctified it in English annals; and the middle ages, even in the blaze of chivalry, can furnish examples of this duty having been performed by ho

nourable characters. Tasso has but one scene in which such an emissary is employed, and he is the Squire of Tancred, book xviii. The praise bestowed upon him and the selection of the person shew his valier Bayard it would appear that the practice had duty to have been no base one. By the life of Chesunk so far as to be practised by mere hirelings generally, that worthy knight always having some trusty spies in his pay; indeed both sides alike retained them. There is a bold fact related of one of those employed by the Spanish general in Bayard's last campaign, who carried off a French sentinel, in his arms, from his post to his own camp. That the office of the Spy has been used by all parties, and by the good and the bad side, for their respective interests, without contamination to the characters of those

luded to this wheel-like arrangement when he said, "this day hath the Lord rolled away your reproach." This figure was, it is very likely, regarded in a different point of view by the Canaanites, who were worshippers of the sun and moon, and the host of heaven; and with them the circle might, in some cases, have reference to the sun, and in others to the moon. Thus the nineteen stones at Boscawen, in Cornwall, might have reference to the lunar cycle, which contains nineteen years. Circles of thirty stones might have reference to the solar month, of thirty days; twelve of which months, with the addition of five intercalary days in ordinary, and six in leap years, is the time in which the sun makes his annual circuit. Other numbers, it is highly probable, were designed to indicate circumstances connected with the Canaanitish superstitions ;---but which it would be fruitless for us to attempt to investigate at this very remote period.

In this country are single Circles, consisting of stones not much, if any, larger than a strong man might bring to the place of their destination; yet before these consecrated places had the advantage of the arts of architecture and sculpture to confer upon them elegance and grandeur, recourse was had to magnitude in the masses employed; and on comparing these works, in different places, we have to notice an obvious progression in the advances to this species of magnificence. Thus the circle of Rollrich, in Oxfordshire, and that near Keswick, in Cumberland, consist of stones from two to not more than six feet in height, while those of Stanton Drew, in Somersetshire, are from eight or nine to ten or twelve feet high. This kind of magnificence appears to have reached its climax in the stupendous works of Abury, or Avebury, and Stonehenge; particularly the former, which, for the space of ground which it originally covered, and the number and magnitude of the stones employed, exceeds every thing we read of in any country. The figure of this ancient British work was that of the Egyptian symbol of the circle and the serpent, on a scale so magnificent, that the serpent extended two miles in length. This stupendous design was executed under local circumstances very favourable to it. On the north side of the Bath road, about half a mile from the village of Kennet, and about five miles from Marlborough, there is a ridge of the chalky downs that runs in a northerly direction;

* Except, perhaps, that at Carnac, in Brittany; which, also, was in form of a snake, and of which four thousand stones are computed to still remain. Vide, "Archæologia," vol. xxii. pp. 191-197.-ED.

this ridge abounds with prodigious masses of sandstone of very fine texture, and light colour; at the foot of this ridge, almost close to the road, is a long group of these stones, grey with moss, and somewhat resembling a flock of sheep reposing, on which account they are called the Marlborough grey wethers. On an adjoining hill was formerly a double circle, which represented the head of the serpent, and the hill still retains the name of Hak-pen, i. e. the snake's head. From this issued a double range of stones, winding over hill and vale to the extent of a mile; this avenue consisted of a hundred stones on each side, and may be considered as the Sacra Via, or path leading to the consecrated spot; the stones were all unhewn, and differing in size from three to five or six feet high. Here, in the central part, a circle was formed of a hundred immensely large stones, some of them nearly six yards in height, out of the ground, and about the same width, but several were much smaller. From this large circle, which included a space of twenty acres, another serpentine avenue, formed of a hundred stones on each side, extended westward, towards Beckhampton, one mile, gradually diminishing, and closing with a single stone, forming the tail end of this enormous serpent. A few years back, a portion of the Kennet avenue was in being, and assisted the imagination in forming to itself a faint idea of what the whole must have been. Within the large single circle of stones were two double circles, one to the north and the other to the south of the centre; these were formed by two concentric circles each, the outer consisting of thirty, the inner of twelve stones; and probably referring to the days in the solar month, and the twelve stones to the months in the year. The hundred stones in the great outer circle, and the hundred stones on each side of the two avenues might also have reference to some cycle peculiar to their own superstitions.

At this day, but little remains of this amazing work: here and there a stone belonging to the central part, a small portion of the Kennet avenue, and a few straggling stones on the Beckhampton side, with a fine Cromlech on the west side of the Kennet avenue, are all that are left of 652 stones, which Dr. Stukeley thus enumerates as constituting the entire work of the temple:

Perhaps the three largest of these, were those which formed a sort of cove within the north circle, having an altar stone before it; in the south circle was a single stone or pillar, which also had an altar stone in front of it. The middle stone of the cove was about fifteen feet and a half square, and about four feet thick. In 1720, when Dr. Stukeley visited this British wonder, both circles were standing, and almost entire. The central pillar of the south circle was twenty-one feet in height, and nine feet in diameter.

Such was the colossal grandeur of the principal part of this symbolical structure, the magnificence of which must have been wonderfully augmented by the serpentine avenues, extending over hill and dale for the distance of a mile on each hand. In 1722, the number of stones remaining in Kennet Avenue were seventy-two, according to Dr. Stukeley, to whose indefatigable industry we are indebted for the original figure of this grand British temple.

Perhaps this vast design originated in the facility of obtaining suitable materials for its accomplishment, for the persons employed had only to disengage the gigantic masses from their native beds on the neighbouring hills, and transfer them from thence to the place selected for them. To these Herculean operations levers and rollers, with a numerous body of labourers, would be sufficient; much more time would necessarily be requisite for the performance of their undertaking, than would have been had they possessed such powerful machinery as we do at the present day, but those simple instruments were of themselves sufficient.

The form of Abury is a proof of its being erected by persons conversant with the customs and religious rites and symbols of the Egyptians: such were the Tyrians, who were in continual contact with that people, and also with Britain.*

Having finished the exterior circle, the overseers of

There is no other way of accounting for the amazing number of Tyrian workmen employed in the building of Solomon's Temple, than the infant state of machinery at that day.

this magnificent work surrounded it with a trench, above fifty feet in depth and sixty or seventy feet in width; at the top, forming a lofty bank on the opposite side of the trench, with the earth thrown up from the fosse, but reserving an entrance from the Sacra Via. Opposite Abury, close to the Bath road, is that colossal mound, called Silbury-hill. The ground in the vicinity of this serpentine temple is of that undulated character which is called down, or the downs. The verdure, which is short and sweet, affords fine pasturage, and is of so beautiful a tint, that the whole seems as if overspread with a green carpet; the soil is thin, on a substratum of fine chalk. The situation is altogether favourable for the assembling of large companies, such as must have been congregated when this was the appointed rendezvous for a great extent of country; the nearest temples to this being Stonehenge to the south, Stanton Drew to the west, and Rollrich to the north; the first about nineteen miles, the others each of them more than fifty.

NOTES,

ANTIQUARIAN, TOPOGRAPHICAL, &c.
No. II. BISHOP'S STORTFORD, HERTS.

THE hand of innovation, misnamed improvement, has swept away nearly all that was interesting from its antiquity in this flourishing market-town; and but few vestiges of former ages are now remaining. Of these the Castle deserves to be mentioned first. It was erected by William the Conqueror, midway between the town and Hockerell, and called WayteMore, from the moor on which it was built, to protect the trade of the place and keep in awe the surrounding peasantry. The King gave it to the Bishop of London and his successors for ever, in whose keeping it continued till King John, to punish William, who was one of the Prelates that boldly published the

*It may be questioned whether Silbury Hill was not, in

some way or other, connected with Abury. That it existed before the Roman road to Bath is evident, for the line of that

road is diverted from its straight and direct course to avoid the hill, which it now passes at a short distance southward. Dr. Owen considers that the Abury Temple was one of the "three Gorsedd Bryn Gwydprimary Circles of Britain," and called “ don." He also supposes that Silbury Hill was "the pile of Cyvrangon ;"-the "heaping" of which is characterized in the 14th Welsh Triad, as one of the "three mighty labours of the Island of Britain."-ED: