* So Moses in the legend commanded the children of Israel to build “an altar of whole stones, over which no man hath lift up any iron”; and so of the boulders composing the altar on Mount Ebal it was said, “Thou shah not lift up any iron tool upon them.” The conservatism of religion kept up the archaic fashion for sacred purposes. The other case is that of the Scone stone. This sacred block, according to the accredited legend, was originally the ancestral god of the Irish Scots, on whose royal tumulus at Tara it once stood. It was carried by them to Argyllshire on their first invasion, and placed in a cranny of the wall (say modern versions) at Dunstaffnage Castle. When the Scotch kings removed to Scone, Kenneth II. took the stone to his new lowland residence. Thence Edward I. {113}carried it off to England, where it has ever since remained in Westminster Abbey, as part of the chair in which the sovereigns of Britain sit at their coronation. The immense significance of these facts or tales will be seen more clearly when we come to consider the analogies of the Hebrew ark. Meanwhile, it may help to explain the coronation usage, and the legend that wherever the Stone of Destiny is found “the Scots in place must reign,” if I add a couple of analogous cases from the history of the same mixed Celtic race. According to Dr. O’Donovan, the inauguration stone of the O’Donnells stood on a tumulus in the midst of a large plain; and on this sacred stone, called the Flagstone of the Kings, the elected chief stood to receive the white wand or sceptre of kingship. A cylindrical obelisk, used for the same purpose, stands to this day, according to Dr. Petrie, in the Rath-na-Riogh. So, too, M’Donald was crowned King of the Isles, standing on a sacred stone, with an impression on top to receive his feet. He based himself, as it were, upon the gods his ancestors. The Tara stone even cried aloud, Professor Rhys tells us, when the true king placed his feet above it. The coronation stone exists in other countries; for example, in Hebrew history, or half-history, we learn that when Abimelech was mads king it was “by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem”; and when Jehoash was anointed by Jehoiada, “the king stood by a pillar, as the manner was.” In front of the church of Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan stands the stone pillar at which the Lombard kings and German emperors took the coronation oath, under the ancient lime-trees which overshadow the piazza.