[Footnote 307: _Ibid._ Appendix, vi. pl. x.]
[Footnote 308: Reeves, 'Adamnan. Vita St. Columb.' p. 150.]
[Footnote 309: Wilson's 'Prehistoric Annals,' p. 332.]
[Footnote 310: An amusing controversy regarding the existence of this stone will be found in the 'Proceedings Scot. Ant.' iv. p. 524 _et seq._ It seems absolutely impossible that any man, even under the inspiration of some primordial whisky, to have drawn by accident a sculpture so like what his ancestors did fifteen centuries before his time.]
[Footnote 311: Gordon, 'Iter Septemtrionale,' p. 151.]
[Footnote 312: In my 'History of Architecture,' ii. p. 345, I ventured timidly to hint that this Armenian ornament would be found identical with that in the Irish and Pictish crosses. Since then I have seen a series of photographs of Armenian churches, which leave no doubt in my mind that this similarity is not accidental, but that the one country borrowed it from the other.]
[Footnote 313: See Stuart's 'Sculptured Stones,' and Colonel Forbes Leslie's 'Early Races of Scotland,' _passim_.]
[Footnote 314: Reeves, 'Adamnan. Vita St. Columb.' pp. 65 and 145.]
[Footnote 315: 'Proceedings Soc. Ant. Scot.' iv. p. 119 _et seq._]
[Footnote 317: Westwood, 'Facsimiles of Irish MSS.' plates 4-28.]
[Footnote 318: These two woodcuts are borrowed from Worsaae, 'The Danes and Northmen.' London, 1852.]
[Footnote 319: 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' ii. p. 70.]
So much has been said by the Danes and their admirers of the services that they have rendered to the study of prehistoric archæology that it is rather disappointing to find that, when looked into, almost less is known regarding their megalithic monuments than regarding those of any other country in Europe. No work has yet been published giving anything like a statistical account of them, and no map exists showing their distribution. What little information can be obtained regarding the Danish dolmens, and other similar monuments, is scattered through so many volumes of transactions and detached essays that it is extremely difficult to arrive at any connected view of them--almost, indeed, impossible for any one who is not locally familiar with the provinces in which they are found. The truth seems to be that the Danish antiquaries have been so busy in arranging their microlithic treasures in glass cases that they have totally neglected their larger monuments outside. They have thus collected riches which no other nation possesses, and have constructed a very perfect grammar and vocabulary of the science. But a grammar and a dictionary are neither a history nor a philosophy; and though their labours may eventually be most useful to future enquirers, they are of very little use for our present purposes. They have indeed up to this time been rather prejudicial than otherwise, by leading people to believe that when they can distinguish between a flint or bronze or iron implement they know the alpha and omega of the science, and that nothing further is required to determine the relative date of any given monument. It is as if we were to adopt the simple chemistry of the ancients, and divide all known substances into earth, water, fire, and air: a division not only convenient but practically so true that there is very little to be said against it. It is not, however, up to the mark of the knowledge of the day, and omits to take notice of the fact that earths can occasionally be converted into gases, and airs converted into liquids or solidified. Instead of their simple system, what is now wanted is something that will take into account the different races of mankind--some progressive, some the reverse--and the different accidents of success and prosperity, or disaster and poverty: the one leading to the aggregation of detached communities into great centres, and consequent progress; the other leading to dispersion and stagnation, if not retrocession, in the arts of life which tend towards what we call civilization. At the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology, held at Copenhagen in the autumn of 1869, it was understood that many of the best Northern antiquaries were inclined to abandon, to a very considerable extent, the hard and fast lines of their first system, and to admit not only that there may be considerable overlapping, but even, in some instances, that its indications were not in accordance with the facts. More than two years have elapsed since the Congress was held, but the volume containing the account of its proceedings is not yet published; when it is, we may probably be in a position to speak much more favourably not only of their views but of the extent of their knowledge of the antiquities in question.