this is the case in an age when writing was so common as between the Conquest and the Reformation, should we be surprised if we find matters so much darker between the departure of the Romans and Alfred, when written history hardly helps us at all? But Rickman's method will, when applied to Stonehenge and similar monuments, if I am not very much mistaken, render their dates nearly as clear as those of our mediæval monuments have been rendered by the same method.
None but those who have had occasion specially to study the subject can be aware how devoid of all literary records the period is of which we are now treating. So meagre and so scarce are they, that many well-informed persons doubt whether such a person as King Arthur ever lived; and scarcely one of his great actions is established by anything like satisfactory contemporary testimony. Yet, in all ages, and in all countries where histories either written or oral exist, they are filled vith the exploits of favourite national heroes—as Arthur was—which, even where they are fullest and most diffuse, it is the rarest possible thing to find in them a record of the building of any temple or tomb. From the building of the Parthenon to the completion of Henry VIII.'s Chapel, the notices of buildings in general histories are as fevw and meagre as may be, and are comprised in a few paragraphs scattered through many hundred volumes. No one, I am convinced who has thought twice on the subject, would expect to find any notice of buildings in the few pages which are all we possess of history between the departure of the Romans and the time of the Venerable Bede; yet the absence of record is the argument which, if I am not mistaken, has had more influence on the popular mind than almost any other. Too generally it is assumed that, as we know nothing about them, they must be old. To me, on the contrary, nothing appears so extremely improbable as that the builders, while leaving no record of their exploits, should have left any written account of the erection of the Rude Stone Monuments.
One other point seems worth alluding to before concluding this chapter, which is that nothing has been advanced, so far as I know, that would lead us to suppose that the people of this island were, before the time of the Romans, either more numerous or more powerful, and consequently more capable of erecting
