position towards earth and sun, thus growing full again, not after
twenty-seven, but after thirty days. Circles of twenty-seven and thirty
days would stand for these lunar epochs, and would, for those who
understood them, further bear testimony to the earth's movement in its
own great path around the sun. Thus would rings of varying numbers mark
the measures of time; and not these only, but the great sweep of orbs
engendering them, the triumphal march of the spheres through pathless
ether. The life of our own world would thus be shown bound up with the
lives of others in ceaseless, ever-widening circles, that lead us to the
Infinite, the Eternal.

All the cromlechs and circles we have thus far recorded are in the
western half of our land; there are as many, as worthy of note, in the
eastern half. But as before we can only pick out a few. One of these
crowns the volcanic peak of Brandon Hill, in Kilkenny, dividing the
valleys of the Barrow and Nore. From the mountain-top you can trace the
silver lines of the rivers coming together to the south, and flowing
onward to the widening inlet of Wexford harbor, where they mingle with
the waters of the River Suir. On the summit of Brandon Hill stands a
great stone circle, a ring of huge basalt blocks dominating the rich
valleys and the surrounding plain.

In Glen Druid of the Dublin hills is a cromlech whose granite crown
weighs seventy tons. Not far off is the Mount Venus cromlech, the
covering block of which is even more titanic; it is a single stone
eighty tons in weight. Near Killternan village, a short distance off, is
yet another cromlech whose top-most boulder exceeds both of these,
weighing not less than ninety tons. Yet vast as all these are, they are
outstripped by the cromlech of Howth, whose upper block is twenty feet
square and eight feet thick, a single enormous boulder one hundred tons