be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever." Cairns, or monuments of the dead, were raised by piles of stones, loosely thrown over the body of the deceased, and increased by each passer-by adding another to the heap. Such a cairn is mentioned over the burial-place of the king of Ai, whom Joshua, when he sacked and burnt the city, "hanged upon a tree until eventide;" and the practice has continued in the Alpine countries, where stones are plentiful, from these older periods to the present; or where a cross upon a mound has Christianized, and marks the spot on which, to banditti, an avalanche, or other misfortune, a human being has fallen a victim. It is not solely in Holy Writ, nor on the plains and heights of Palestine, that evidences of similar practices are to be found. All Europe is full of them; and on the authority of the American journals, examples of rude stone circles, which in Europe would be called decidedly Druidical, are not wanting to increase the enigmatical conformities between the eastern and western hemispheres. The obelisks set up by the Incas in Peru (vide Aglio's plates), like the Devil's Arrows at Boroughbridge (vide Drake's "Eboracum"), or the French Chaise à Diable ("Bulletin Monumental," vol. x. p. 462), can but resemble Jacob's pillar of stone in material and purpose; and round circles of stones can be matched in every quarter of the globe.
As, however, it is a stone more immediately at home that I purpose to illustrate, I shall at present restrict myself, in its elucidation, to conformities and examples drawn from existing or described monuments in our western hemisphere, which may tend to give a better idea of the Kingstone, the reasons for its use, and the solemnities of which it was the frequent witness. For India, Sir R. Colt Hoare, in his "History of Modern
