In endeavouring to keep up to such a rule, I must advertise the reader of the general purport of this volume. It may be said to consist of four parts. Three are descriptions of the three kinds of Druid temples, or we may call them patriarchal temples, which I have observed in _Britain_. The fourth will be reflexions upon them, as to their antiquity and origin; the founders of such in the more early ages of the world, and in the more oriental countries. And tho’ in writing the descriptive part of these heads, (which I did on the spot, and with great leisure) my papers swell’d to an enormous bulk; and it was necessary for my own right understanding the antiquities: yet I shall shorten them exceedingly, in delivering the work to the publick. In doing this, I shall be very much helped by the engraven designs which at one view give the reader a better notion of the things, than the most elaborate descriptions. Likewise in that part of the work wherein I reason upon these temples, and trace out the vestiges of such as are recorded to us by the learned authors of antiquity now preserved, I shall barely lay the appearances of things together; the relation between these monuments we now see with our eyes, and the accounts of such-like (as I take them) which I find in those authors to have been from oldest time. I shall leave the reader to form his judgment from such evidence, without endeavouring to force his assent with fancied proofs, which will scarce hold good, in matters of so remote an age. After what I have said in my former volume on _STONEHENGE_, which carries our ideas concerning these antiquities, up to the very earliest times of the world; I may venture to discourse a little _ex priori_, concerning the origin of temples in general. And this will open my purpose concerning the three first heads of this book: the three different kinds of the Druid or patriarchal temples in the _Britannic_ isles. If we desire to know any thing of a matter so very remote, as in all other affairs of antiquity, we must necessarily have recourse to the Bible. And I apprehend, it is mentioned in that passage _Genesis_ IV. the last verse; “and to _Seth_, to him also there was born a son, and he call’d his name _Enos_: then began men to call upon the NAME of the LORD.”