Many are the conjectures as to what purport these stones were used:  sometimes they were sepulchral, as Jacob’s pillar over Rachel, Gen. xxxv. 20.  Ilus, son of Dardanus, king of Troy, was buried in the plain before that city beneath a column, Iliad, xi. 317.  Sometimes they were erected as trophies, as the one set up by Samuel between Mizpeh and Shen, in commemoration of the defeat of the Philistines; one was also erected at Murray, in Scotland, as a monument of the fight between Malcolm, son of Keneth, and Sueno the Dane.  We also find them as witnesses to covenants, like that of Jacob and Laban, which, though originally an emblem of a civil pact, became afterwards the place of worship of the whole twelve tribes of Israel.  All these relics, to say nothing of the cromlechs in Malabar, bear a silent and solemn testimony of some by-gone people, whose religious and civil customs had extended wide over the earth.  Their monuments remain, but their history has perished, and the dust of their bodies has been scattered in the wind.  The Druids availed themselves of those places most likely to give an effect to their vaticinations; and not only obtained, but supported by terror the influence they held over the superstitious feelings of our earliest forefathers.  Where nature presented a bizarre mass of rocks, the Druid worked, and peopled it with his gods, the most remarkable of which is the subject of our engraving, called the Wring Cheese, or Cheese Wring, in the parish of St. Clare, near Liskeard, in Cornwall.  This singular mass of rocks is 32 feet high.  The large stone at the top was a logan, or rocking-stone.  Geologists are inclined to consider it as a natural production, which is probably the case in part, the Druids taking advantage of favourable circumstances to convert these crags to objects of superstitious reverence.  On its summit are two rock basins; and it is a well-known fact, that baptism was a Pagan rite of the highest antiquity, (vide the Etruscan vases by Gorius.) Here, probably, the rude ancestor of our glorious land was initiated amidst the mystic ceremonies of the white-robed Druid and his blood-stained sacrifices.  A similar mass exists at Brimham, York; and in the “History of Waterford,” p. 70, mention is made of St. Declan’s stone, which, not liking its situation, miraculously swam from Rome, conveying on it St. Declan’s bell and vestment.

J. Silvester.

* * * * *

CURIOUS ANCIENT LEGEND.

(For the Mirror.)

In ancienne tyme, and in a goodly towne, neare to Canterbury, sojourned a ladie faire.  She one nighte, in the absence of her lorde, leaned her lovely arme upon a gentleman’s, and walked in the fyldes.  When journeying far, she became afraide, and begged to returne.  The gentleman, with kyndest sayings and greate courtesey, retraced their steps; when in this saide momente, this straynge occurrence came to