Very well, I said, if he could see it plainly in his mind he could give some rough idea of the wing-spread--how much would it measure from tip to tip?
He said it was perhaps fifty yards--perhaps a good deal more! A similar trick was played by my mind about Stonehenge.

As a child I had stood in imagination before it, gazing up awestruck on those stupendous stones or climbing and crawling like a small beetle on them.

And what at last did I see with my physical eyes?
Walking over the downs, miscalled a plain, anticipating something tremendous, I finally got away from the woods at Amesbury and spied the thing I sought before me far away on the slope of a green down, and stood still and then sat down in pure astonishment.

Was this Stonehenge--this cluster of poor little grey stones, looking in the distance like a small flock of sheep or goats grazing on that immense down! How incredibly insignificant it appeared to me, dwarfed by its surroundings--woods and groves and farmhouses, and by the vast extent of rolling down country visible at that point.

It was only when I had recovered from the first shock, when I had got to the very place and stood among the stones, that I began to experience something of the feeling appropriate to the occasion.
The feeling, however, must have been very slight, since it permitted me to become interested in the appearance and actions of a few sparrows inhabiting the temple.