However this may be, I trust that this work may lay claim to being, in one respect at least, a contribution to the cause of truth regarding the much-disputed age and use of these Rude Stone Monuments. It states distinctly and without reserve one view of the mooted question, and so openly that any one who knows better can at once pull away the prop from my house of cards and level it with the ground. If one thing comes out more clearly than another in the course of this investigation, it is that the style of architecture to which these monuments belong is a style, like Gothic, Grecian, Egyptian, Buddhist, or any other. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and though we cannot yet make out the sequence in all its details, this at least seems clear--that there is no great hiatus; nor is it that one part is prehistoric, while the other belongs to historic times. All belong to the one epoch or to the other. Either it is that Stonehenge and Avebury and all such are the temples of a race so ancient as to be beyond the ken of mortal man, or they are the sepulchral monuments of a people who lived so nearly within the limits of the true historic times that their story can easily be recovered. If this latter view is adopted, the whole, it appears to me, hangs so perfectly together, and presents so complete and so rational an account of all the local or historical facts which are at present known concerning these remains, that I feel great confidence that it must eventually be adopted as the true explanation of the phenomena. If it is it will have this further advantage, that when any serious attempt is made to investigate either the history or the manners and customs of these ancient peoples, it is probable that these megalithic remains will be found to be the best and surest guide.