s. Two of the inner
trilithons, the highest rising twenty-five feet, remain perfect, and
there are two single uprights, which lean considerably. The flat slab or
altar-stone is lying on the ground. The avenue of approach opens in
front of the inner ellipse and in a line with the altar-stone. In the
avenue, outside the enclosure, is a block sixteen feet high in a leaning
position, and known as the Friar's Heel. The legend tells us that when
the great Enemy of the human race was raising Stonehenge he muttered to
himself that no one would ever know how it was done. A passing friar,
hearing him, exclaimed, "That's more than thee can tell," and then fled.
The Enemy flung this great stone after him, but hit only the friar's
heel. The investigators of Stonehenge say that when standing on the
altar-stone the midsummer sun is seen to rise to the north-east directly
over the "Friar's Heel." The traces of the avenue in which it stands
are, however, soon found to divide into two smaller avenues, one running
south-east and the other north, and the latter is connected beyond with
a long enclosure called the Cursus, and marked by banks of earth
stretching east and west for about a mile and a half: there is nothing
known of its use. The whole country about Stonehenge is dotted with
groups of sepulchral barrows, and at the western end of the Cursus is a
cluster of them more prominent than the others, and known as the "Seven
Burrows." Stonehenge itself inspires with mystery and awe, the blocks
being gray with lichens and worn by centuries of storms. Reference to
them is found in the earliest chronicles of Britain, and countless
legends are told of their origin and history, they usually being traced
to mythical hands. In James I.'s reign Stonehenge was said to be a Roman
temple, dedicated to Coelus; subsequently, it was attributed to the
Danes, the Phoenicians, the Britons, and the Druids by various
writers. Sir Richard Hoare, who has studied the mystery most closely,
declines all these theories, and says the monument is grand but
"voiceless." Horace Walpole shrewdly observes that whoever examines
Stonehenge attributes it to that class of antiquity of which he is
himself most fond; and thus it remains an insoluble problem to puzzle
the investigator and impress the tourist. Michael Drayton plaintively
and quaintly confesses that no one has yet solved the mystery:

"Dull heape, that thus thy head above the rest doest reare,
Precisely ye