of heathenism which had been revived among us. With his splendor of clerical pause and emphasis he read the denunciatio

rother, and every one against his neighbor, c

the sins of the people would meet a bloody retribution. Then, referring to the page, he pronounced with bi

to the charmers, and to them that hav

sinful portion of the congregation than homilies a

nel Prowley, quoting the text upon the meetin

ere's Dr. Burge tells us to keep out of their way, a

our party upon the meeting-hous

me stimulant of equal potency, ran to meet us in the entry, to enjoin silence and a passive state of mind before entering the parlor. The manifestations during service had been most wonderful. Tw

e anything was, for a long time, out of the question; for the spirits had insisted upon having the shutters closed, and shawls pinned up before the cracks in the same, ere they would favor mortals with an exhibition. Finall

y. The squashes was musty afore they was brought into the house. No blame to the cook. Them pickled termarterses co

ominative and objective cases of the personal pronoun.) "Me don't like what you say, old Twyney! I's name's Red-Jacket. Pale-face give fire-water to I. The squashes was good enough till cook left

to the examination of these delusions; but I will venture to

e listened to hours of no better drivel than this, fathered, not upon Indians and unknown elocutionis

ese people volun

ent through the same spasms, convulsions, and painful racking of the limbs which accompany such cases of this personation as are not designed deceptions. Even those accidentally present, when the effect

s up and making an awkward sort of obeisance to the hous

e. Great Spirit sends lots m

for a ghostly war-whoop,-and the beloved o

e, and proceeded to scalp a

le to resist the infection, and so sprang among the party, whirled

umsy travesty of that choric saltation with which Apollo was said to inspire his Pythian virgins. Dr. Burge, yo

tellato gave up his scalping-knife, flopped feebly upon a chair, and again became a transparent jelly-fish of philosophy and water. It was harder to bring Miss Turligood to herself, by reason of the singular intractability of the squaw who had taken possess

ime pass! A brief adjournment for dinner will now take place. The circle will meet for renewed investigatio

party again. The presence of friends from the city, who are in Foxden only for the day, renders a meeting this afternoon out

ommanded us to hold sittings in your parlor three times a day til

of the spirits. They have no right

impious announcement. The smooth sciolist Stellato rallied his weak wits and uttered a cry of wonder at such flagitious heresy. The future Lady Byron, t

elivered Miss Turligood over to her Irishman, (who had brought a carryall with him this time,) and charged him never to dri

ief, "let us forget this nonsense, and go to dinner,-for

and to be the teaching of your invisible

w s

t recogniz

"I doubt if the ghosts were q

ation, and that prepared on the previous day, as is our custom on the Sabbath

edicine, knew little enough about cookery. They would have made sorry work, had it been

right to make a jest of this matter; for, although the manifestations of to-day have been ridiculous

and bumping of baggage was heard. The interruption came from befor

usly rebuking an exclamation of astonishment from his sister, who had gone to the win

ent. "That portly figure to which the pencil of the artist has done such feeble justice! the

ou don't

ean! Come and se

you-may-call-it has got into your head,-or, heavens! can it be

arley himself!" eja

tunicked attendants?" gasped the C

said Dr. Burge, assuringly; "he

k, and then from month to month. Always expecting to leave by the next steamer, he had never thought it worth while to write. Had been on shore exactly nine hours, was delighted with the country, and had already written the first chapter of a book about it. Was, nevertheless, surprised

ering these and other sentiments, the High Priest and Potentate over all S

noring the proper ordinances of the day, proceeded to send to the hotel for a beefs

't you think it barely possible, that, if Betty ran down to the river and caught a few of those snapping-turtles sunning the

f the length of time it would take to achieve any passable imitation of the aldermanic dainty,-I was moved to an aside-declaration to the effect that my slight observ

int. There was a new "saloon" just opened in Main Stre

ned to our amended dinner; but, when we did

, be worth hearing about. Moreover, he had not read a word of Carlyle, and positively did not know of the existence of any English poet called Browning. Dr. Burge, he thoughtfully suggested, had probably mistaken the name; it was Byron, or possibly Bulwer, about whom he wished to inquire. The former of these personages was a British Peer, and a writer of some celebrity; he was, however, no longer livi

Widesworth class-ladies inclining to knitting and corpulency in the afternoon of life-who possess the like faculty of warming society with the blaze of an ecstatic egotism. Well, there are moments-why not confess it? for is not man body as well as soul?-when it is a relief to get away from our mystics, system-mongers, and peerers into the future, and claim a brotherhood after the flesh with your average Briton, who looks out of his comfortable present only to look into his comfortable past. Yet let this estate be temporary; for it is well to return to our thin diet, and, instead of jolly after-dinner talk, repeat the high and aspiring phrases of certain New-Englanders who lead the generous thought and life of a continent. Phrases! Yes, but how m

trusion on the previous evening. "I have heard of Doctor Pordage and the Dragon, and of the Drummer of Tedworth; but when

! As to the obituary I had written, it may do for some other time,-for, indeed, my felicity in s

have no wish to test your powers in that direction; and

rica I hope you will not fail to declare, that, in folly, deception, and u

host of somebody still alive is no uncommon deception: several cases of the sort have come under my recent observation. And it is well that they sometimes occur; for they must cause reflection in all who are not victims of a mental disorder which seems to confound the reasoning powers of man,-causing its subjects to accept as teach

ed bravely forth upon his theme. Sir Joseph moved uneasily.

is one piece of wisdom regulating the spiritu

t is tha

t recognize

ere not altogether wrong there; and so I will trouble Miss Prowley for a bit more of the

owley, "may, with exceeding propriety, be drunk in wat

weaker than our political ones

, brimming over with an honest hilarity,-"a toast which

ffering a hearty shake of the hand to the High Senio

ong life to Sir

SPI

o feel the fo

st in

begin, and th

aring t

e night, the pr

st of

the Arch Fear i

trong man

is done and the

barrie

to fight ere the

ard of

fighter, so-o

t and t

Death bandaged my

e me cr

the whole of it,

roes o

n a minute pay gl

darkness,

orst turns the b

k minute

rage, the fiend-

ndle, sha

ll become first a

ht, then t

y soul! I shall

God be

GTON I

ice to attest the kinship of the writer with the distinguished subject of his biography. It is a quiet and tranquil picture that he has given us, of a serene and tranquil life. As we have turned it over delightedly, chapter after chapter, and volume upon volume, we have wished

e men, indeed, whose history, by whomsoever recorded, would suggest no such questioning,-men who have elbowed their way through life, bent upon some single aim, with a grand and coarse disregard of all the heart-burnings they may have caused, and all the idols they may have brushed down. Washington Irving was by no means such a man; he was kind-hearted to the last degree; and yet, remembering as we do that sly look of humor which lurked always in the corner of his eye, we cannot believe but that in his freer moments he ha

of respect for the grace, the purity, the dignity, which Washington Irving has added to our literature; and yet we honor still more that true American heart which beams through all his writings, and throughout th

ies with whom to do battle,-no John Knox thwacking terribly upon all heretical pates, and sweating with his obstinacy, as much as with the vigor of his blows; but the kindly gentleman, giving tone and bea

theatre; he attended school, where he stole the reading of such books as "Robinson Crusoe," and "Sinbad the Sailor"; and he wrote compositions for such of his fellows as would make good his tasks in mathematics. This was a study which he never loved, and to the last he abjured all stringency of m

ern New York, better than he loves Judge Livingston, or the books of his law-patron, Mr. Hoffman. He has a scribbling mood upon him at this early day, too, and contributes to the New-York "Morning Chronicle" certain letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, which are remarked for their pleasant humor. At the age of twenty-one (1804) continued ill-health suggests a sea-voyage. He leaves law

t-law. But at the very time of his examination he is concocting with James Paulding the project of "Salmagundi," which presently enli

marked "private," which come under the eyes of the biographer only after Mr. Irving's death, he says,-"I idolized her. I felt at times rebuked by her superior delicacy and purity, and as if I was a coarse, unworthy being in comparison.... I saw her fade rapidly away, beautiful, and more beau

few punctilious Dutch families who were offended at its sallies; but cultivated people

, he is of course thrown adrift. But through the influence of his friends at home he is offered the position of Chief Clerk of the Navy Department, with a salary of twenty-four hundred dollars a year. This, however, after some misgivings, he declines. He does not like the idea of being cramped by official routine of duty. He will try what he can do with his pen. And for months after making this decision (we

re was an early republication, under the author's auspices, in London. He was fêted: it was so odd that an American should write with such control of language, with such a play of fancy, with such pathetic grace. There was a kind of soci

his subject-matter,-but due to the fact that a man born overseas had suddenly appeared among British writers, who could lay hold

unfortunate enlistment in a steamboat-enterprise upon the Seine, there is full and most lively account in the "Life and Letters" before us. "Bracebridge Hall," despatched from Paris in 1822, is received with the same favor which had attended

complished mistress, is a lady of fortune, who has two "lovely daughters." Mr. Irving, in concert with two or three gentlemen-friends, organizes certain home-theatricals, in which the Misses Foster engage with ready zeal and a charming grace. There are Italian readings, and country-excursions, to all of which Mr. Irving is a delighted party. He hardly knows how to tear himself away from scenes so enchanting. To Miss Foster he writes, on the occasion of a little foray into Bohemia,-"I am almost wishing myself back already. I ought to be off like your bird, but I feel I shall not be able to keep clear of the cage." Mrs. Foster, with a womanly c

nd pleasant account of their association with Mr. Irving, and closes with a few lines which, she says, he wrote in her scrap-book in 1832. "He declared it was impossible for him to be less in a writing-mood." And thereupon follow the well-known lines entitled "Echo and Silence." They certainly do not prove very much for the writing-mood of Mr. Irving,-whatever they may prove for Sir Egerton Brydges. The contribution of the younger sister, Mrs. Flora Dawson, is in a somewhat exaggerated and melodramatic vein, in the course of which she takes occasion to expend a great deal of pity upon "poor Irving," who is made to appear in the character of a rejected suitor for the hand of her sister. It is true that the testimon

"Columbus" is on every library-shelf; and we remember a certain dog's-eared copy of the "Conquest of Granada" which once upon a time set all the boys of a certain school agog with a martial furor. How we shook our javelins at some bewildered cow blunderi

last, and, full of honors, sails for New York once more, in the year 1832, at the ripe age of forty-nine. There never was a warmer welcome given to a returning citizen. A feast is made for him, at which

nd "Bonneville" and the "Tour on the Prairies" keep his hand active and his brain in play. Near and dear relatives relieve his bachelor home of all loneliness. Nine

e as the old untrammelled life in the Peninsula. No matter how light the duties, routine is a harness that galls him. We can almost hear his cheer of thanksgiving as he breaks away from it, and comes once more to his cherished home of Sunnyside. He is n

is gone; Kemble is just above him, at his forge, under the lee of the Highlands.

e by volume the work comes forward. The public welcome it,-for they love the author, and they love the subject. Three volumes,-four volumes; and there are rumors that the old gentleman is failing. But whoever finds admission to that delightful home of Sunnyside meets the old smile, the o

task. The step is growing feebler and the cough more annoying. It is the year 1859, and the seventy-seventh of his

him too well. Surely, this sympathy of readers, spontaneous, inevitable, will keep his name always green. There may come greater purists,-though they must con the language well; writers of m

loved and respected. His were no brawny shoulders to push their way, no matter what points were galled by contact,-no self-asserting, irresistible press of purpose, which is careless of opinion. Throughout, we see in his kindl

r the most part, as everybody condemns. By reason of this quality in him, he avoids strongly controverted points in history; or, if his course lies over them, he gives a fairly adjusted average of opinion; he is not in mood for trenchant assertions of this or that belief. This same quality, again, makes him shun political life. He has a horror of its wordy wars, its flood

, "Lo, a coward!" It is only too true that cowards and sluggards both may take shelter under a shield of indifference; but it is equally true that any reasonably acute mind, if only charitably disposed, can readily distinguish between an inactivity which s

harge he always regarded as an affront, and met with scorn. There are those so grossly constituted as to measure a man's love of his own country by the sneers he flings at the country of others. It was not in Mr. Irving's nature to sneer at even an enemy; it was not his way of making conquest. He recognized fully the advantages of a foreign life (at his date) in following up that career of belles-lettres study wh

ry appreciation of his labor which to any author is an immense stimulant. But following upon these happy humors came seasons of wearisome depression; the stale manuscript of yesterday lost its charm; the fancy refused to be lighted; he has not the heart to hammer

th a larger and more philosophic grasp of thought. It may well be that at some future time we shall have a more profound estimate of the relations which our great Leader held to his cause and to his time; but, however profound and just such a work may be, we feel quite safe in predicting that it will never supplant the graceful labor of Mr. Irving in the hearts of the American pe

he simplest: a broken heart; a rural funeral; a Christmas among the hollies; an hour in the Abbey of Westminster: what is there new, or to care greatly for, in these t

y are there who can set such

healthy, hearty manhood, and only a peasant's pen, touches them in such way that his tou

sweet story of the Vicar we do not measure by its breadth of logic. And no American, no matter how late born he may be, but, if he wander in the Catskills, shall

yet the village-shops were all closed; the streets, the houses, the station, were hung in black; thousands fro

were admired by all; but there is something worthier to be said than

E

RT

t its full power; work was well done; there was no further trespassing on other precincts; the world was in perfect order, so far as St. George's administration of it extended. He was, moreover, a man of distinction; serving, young as he was, four terms in Congress from a distant district, he was already spoken of again as the candidate of the immediate vicinity; his advice was sought in a hundred matters about which he knew nothing at all,-and always given, in spite of the last-mentioned circumstance; he had a careless, easy way of taking the life out of a man's mouth, so to speak, and disposing of it for that man's advantage as he himself pleased, so that the man felt under an infinite obligation; he had, too, an air with him of such superiority over the ills of life, such und

een quite willing to shut their eyes. They forgot, however, that, when you insist on being yourself an iceberg, you

had gone on the first clear day strolling round the place, as secure as in a

answered, he had added in a soliloquy, as if not deigning a second address for a second rebuff

es, the sunset ran red in the sky and warned her to hasten home. But she disregarded the warning till purple shadows fell softly on the page, and stars and moon stole out to peer above her shoulder and see what it was that so entranced the maiden. Rising hurriedly, she moved away; and only when she had crossed two or three of the stepping-stones did she perceive, on looking down, that, while she had been reading, the water had

l voice in her ear, as her feet were planted on dry lan

dare you?" cried él

not wait upon I would, like the cat i' the adage, while the oak caught

t have been he

in all the churches, ne

r, I can spar

r. St. George, raising his eyebrows. "The dam that shuts up the irrigating waters broke an hour ago," added he,

s a littl

iged to you, S

ed to offend you again," he continued, "as further

up which Mr. St. George, in his high seven-league boots, clambered so soon as he had set her down. Instead of venturing any

ind, and I am v

her from his height a second with an inexplicable expression, and

hair that night, "and Massa St. George's horse waited two mortal hours to take him

the cloud on her face spoke for her i

you,-oh, no, indeed!-but at all of

That will do, Hazel. Have you spoke

rom ole Massa,-we minded ole Massa for lub,-but I dunno if it's the music, when Massa St. George speaks, that makes you

"is very good to his people;

'y he a'n't no

, Hazel," said éloise, facing the sud

and at length glancing up from where she stooped, with a sc

a St. George now for

You would do bett

r the handmaiden's suit. She was vaguely aware that she was the last person in the world whose past conduct harmonized with the asking of favors, and she silently offered slight pro

y rarely so much as passed through. She sat erect, just then,-her head thrown far back, and the eyelids cast down along the pale face. Mr. St. George came into t

Mnemosyne,"

yet she recalled, for support, all the romances she had read, and their eloquent portraitures of love, and, remembering that just as Rebecca loved Ivanhoe, as Paolo loved Francesca, so Hazel and Va

t. Geo

id you speak?" he ask

ant to ask you a fav

air that he saw her effort, then came and

had a maid, who was always mine, who grew up with me, be

t. George's riding-whip,-that being one of her warm traits j

no longer? That sh

it. She is only seventeen, she has been an atom

ceptibly that éloise added,

gave her. I knew it by the ivory vine-stem twining the ebony; and there are her initials in the lovely gold chasing.

Mr. St. Ge

forgetfully, and, unthinkingly, with great di

e knout to their bridegrooms?"

ould have repli

Hazel is v

u like her to be made more d

nk you. That isn't it a

dee

d deal,-by stealth: and they want to be married. But Mr. Marlboro' is their terror, he may

Miss Cha

hen?" cried éloi

lboro' will

n't

oro's that there never was

. They would tell to

ld off the Cuban plantation, where

he would give

he would giv

ve never

consequence. He

lly suppose that Mr. Marlbo

ll see what I can

you are! T

e was abo

f you please,"

meditation. When he spoke, it

ght of an enemy. Perhaps it is a magnanimity that would be p

to be able to s

Vane do not marry till Doomsday, you will not ask Marlboro' for the gift. It places you, an

osite her, smil

," said éloise, laughing

; and he turned abruptly away, because he knew he

p in her chair, a fire upon the hearth, and éloise sitting on the floor before it with her box and brushes, essaying to catch t

s she looked up with a certain sweetness in her smile, and pushed back the drooping tress, that, streaming along

n get the violet edges, I can get the changing bend,-but there 'a n

uttered Mr. St. George, unintelligibly, an

dismayed, abruptly put up h

de-season over nuts and wine, there was nobody there but Mrs. Arles, who picked h

ll than St. George and éloise did on the succeeding morning. And in that chill a long period elap

t of the soft and balmy winter, Mr. St.

uests at noon, for several weeks. That is the list. I rely on Miss

y morning. "It isn't like Mr. St. George's bachelor parties with Marlboro' and Montgomery

aid éloise; and she went into the cab

posterous thing for her to do. And though, when she heard their voices in the hall, she longed just to open the door and give one glance at Laura Murray sweeping by, or draw Lottie Humphreys in through the crack and indulge in one quic

e desk and her hands upon her eyes, suddenly glanced up and saw a gentleman entering the cabinet, where no gentle

atom of time, then stepped

rnier, I am

ulder, "to present to Miss Changarnier Mr. Marlbo

owed like fever, if they were not perpetually wrapped in dream. There was a certain air of careful breeding about him, different from Earl St. George Erne's high-bred bearing, inasmuch as he insisted upon his pedigree and St. George forgot his. Too fiery a Southerner to seek the advantages of Northern colleges, he had educated himself in England, and had contracted while at Oxford the habit of eating opium. Returning home at his maj

rge was looking on, and since that person, constituting himself her grim guardian, had in a mann

ter her, and then turne

he Abélard to such

was filling a pipe, and whistlin

you what, S

thrummed on the book

t to impart so

le nun taken t

nun of my

so long in the house with Miss Changarnier, m

Mordecai the Jew sitting in the king's gate. As so many Jews do to-day," muttered St. George,-"ay, and on their thr

My way is all

way to

he al

Mr. St. George, the pipe being lighted, the face loomin

Marlboro', "to marry

y what I intend

ou

in the sun; but just then a new guest arr

the preparation of hers; and as the work proceeded, Lottie Humphreys added herself to the group, in grand tenue, and pushed Hazel

s throne, when he speaks to you; it puts my heart in a flutter. How do you dare ask him to pass the butter? Now just tell me. Are you engaged to him? Tell me t

phreys! And you've put geraniums in my hair, when

e so dark as you ar

said éloise, turning with her smile,

ent over his shoulder, as he took éloise out to din

ir to the succession. Does the g

is precisely as a good g

il the sacred ark?" said

, Miss Changarnier," said M

fall, since an expression, he felt, entered it that he dared not have her see. There was always a certain disarray about the costume of éloise; one tress of her hair was always drooping too low, or one thrust back behind the beautiful temple and tiny ear, or a bracelet was half undone, or a mantle dropping off,-trifles that only gave one the desire to help her; she constantly wore, too, a scarf or shawl, or something of the kind, and the drapery lent her a kind of tender

e warfare with St. George. St. George would not condescend, neither would he sully éloise's name by bandying it about with another lover. If Marlboro' begged him to toss up for chances, St. George answered that he never threw up a chance; when he went further and offered to stake success or loss, St. George told him he had cast his last die; when he would have spoken her name to him directly, St. George withered him with flamy eyes, and let his manner become too rigid for one to dare more with him. But the ladies had already caught the spirit of the thing,

l bridled, all f

as the magnet

singular deposit on the beach, of rare silvery shells underflushed with rose, kept there over a tide for her eyes; to-day, he treated her to politics condensed into a single phrase whose essence told all his philosophy:-"The great err

d a moment before them, one evening

zation?" said he. "The v

ion is a go

re's a redder phantom than

king about, polit

ith the first!" said Mr. St. George, bowing to

to ascend to her own rooms, Mr. St. George came along again, and,

ista been saying to you?"

oked igno

know he is in love with you! Slavery is a curse! a curse that we inherit for th

from you, for whom the disciples claim Calh

an in Maine or Louisiana! for the right to do as I have the mind!" exclaimed Mr. St. Georg

seam between them, as always. Here, at length, after sufficient tantalization by its means, Marlboro' venturously intruded himself every day. Too familiar for interruption, he took another seat, and watched her swift hand's graceful progress. If her pen delayed, she found another awaiting her,-her posture wearied, a footstool was rolled towards her feet,-her sid

eet, but that its spell was too strong for him to endure beneath his mask. Yet éloise drew no deductions; if at first she noticed that it was he who laid the shawl on her shoulders, if she remembered, that, when he fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there, she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that he failed in small politenesses of the footsto

foot lay relieved on a white embroidered cushion, that its owner was glancing up and smiling at a gentleman who bent above her, and that that gentleman was Mr. St. George. When this change had taken place, and whether it had been abrupt or gradual, her careless eye could not tell; and, forgetting her own part momentarily in order to take in the whole of the drama in which they were all acting, éloise spilled her tea and made some work for Hazel. As the gir

omething like sunshine suffusing the brown depth of his eyes; "but the t

I sh

!" he cried, w

back at him, laughing, and shaking her threatening fan as he stepp

llumined all the paintings of clusters of fruit and bunches of flowers upon the white panelling, had yet a little ray to spare for the girl where sh

s 'Loise! I'm in such

e Bluffs laws that they had broken: there were no marriages allowed off the place there. Vane was expiating his offence no one knew where, and ther

d there, listening to Miss Murray's singing within. éloise went and took her place beside him, while his face brightened. He had been eating opium again, and his eyes were full of dreams. From where they stood upon the

hat I want," said éloise, a

shall not

out gesture or glance, while there gleamed in her eye a subtle look that told how easy it

. "I have lent her to Mrs. Arles awhi

, then? A very

es

ou wan

r. Marl

d never relax. What creeps through the iron fingers once can creep again. The gentle dews distilling through the pores of the granite congeal in the first

in her charming

not be an admirable lesson to

likewise, eh, Marlboro'?" said St. George

lboro', in his placid tone; but St. George was out of h

ed? Truly indeed? Ho

ppy,-happier, by the infin

, oblivious of his last speech. "But can I?-may I

he is yours!" And before éloise could pour forth

s to beg at the moment when it grants. Directly, he had w

if in response I might ha

turned her smiling face upo

ried to release her hand. But Mr. Marlboro' did not know that his grasp upon it was that of a vice, for under an artificial stimulus every action is as intense as the fired fancy itself. And as she found it impossible to free it without visible violence, other thoughts visited éloise. Why should she not give it to him? Who else cared for it? What object had her lonely life? Speak sweetly as they might, what one of her old galla

at he had disadvised, and, as if to warn her afresh, he looked long, a derisive smile curling his proud lip. That was enough. "He knows it!" exclaimed éloise to herself. "He believes it! He thinks I love him! He never shall be sure of it!" And tu

ht from where they stood, winding do

be on the water to-nigh

trooped down the turf to the shore. The boats were afloat and laden before one knew it. Mr. Marlboro' and éloise were just one instant too late. Laura Murray shook a triu

to another, a word, a name, and a promise. éloise was on board, expecting Mrs. Arles and Mrs. Houghton to follow. Marlboro' sprang upon the end, and drew in the rope behind him, waving the other ladies a farewell;

said St. George, wit

ons, not above a trifling play of vanity, welcoming the exhilaration of a race, where she might half forget her trouble, and pleased with a vague anticipation of some intervention that might recall the word which even in these five dragging moments had already begun to corro

ke my oar. As for me, I'm off,"-and he sprang upon the bank, sending the boat spinning off into the current again from his foot. I

id éloise, "shall we not

old of the linen. "I never turn! Look your last

e was so white that it shone, there was a wild glitter in his eye, and

said éloise, resolutely. "I

me!" said Marl

frenzy. The creek had widened almost to a river,-the sea was close at hand, with its great tumbling surf. S

, and steadied the

high heaven, it roars on to the uttermost undulation of the atmosphere, and we are a part of it! We are only a mote upon its breath, a dust-atom

kening, he might only snatch her in his arms and plu

l this crystal sphere of the waters! We hear the gentle lapping of the ripples on the shore, we hear the tones of evening-bells swim out and melt above us, we hear the oar shake off its shower of tinkling drops,-up the jewel-

hrobs in some far purple island of the main, prolonged who knows how far?-love shall make for us perpetual youth, there shall no gloom enter our Eden, perfect solitu

NE

as in

e sweepin

summer midnig

he templ

p, on ei

nts along the

den domes

e sea-mi

ms, dividing

's fortre

r lance

back the splend

ared ang

e silent

ock the horsema

the wat

ed Sphin

morning in th

amid t

ess curre

ring through h

portento

a monar

power resistl

om the st

the spring

es the forest

than ber

woods vas

eam the braided

your gra

tremblin

ver's scornfu

for ete

laces s

r golden turr

my wat

ery I

nd of dynast

my haug

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of this house Jack is said to have carved his name. When the pavement of the Strand is under repair, Wych Street becomes, perforce, the principal channel of communication between the east and the west end; and Theodore Hook used to say that he never passed through Wych Street in a hackney-coach without being blocked up by a hearse and a coal-wagon in the van, and a mud-cart and the Lord Mayor's carriage in the rear. Wych Street is among the highways we English are ashamed to show to foreigners. We have threatened to pull it down bodily, any time these two hundred years, and a portion of the southern side, on which the old Lyons Inn abutted, has indeed been razed, preparatory to the erection of a grand metropol

ed well-nigh impassable by splendid equipages which have conveyed dukes and marquises and members of Parliament to the Olympic. Frequently, but prior to the lamented death of Prince Albert, you might observe, if you passed through Wych Street in the forenoon, a little platform, covered with faded red cloth, and shaded by a dingy, striped awning, extending from one of the entrance-doors of the Olympic to the edge of the sidewalk. The initiated became at once aware that Her Most Gracious Majesty int

p captured from the French. With these timbers, some lath and plaster, a few bricks, and a little money, Astley ran up a theatre dedicated to the performance of interludes and burlettas,-that is, of pieces in which the dialogue was not spoken, but sung, in order to avoid interference with the patent-rights of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. In our days, this edifice was known as the Olympic. When I knew this theatre first, it had fallen into a state of seemingly hopeless decadence. Nobody succeeded there. To lease the Olympic Theatre was to court bankruptcy and invite collapse. The charming Vestris had been its tenant for a while. There Liston and Wrench had delighted the town with their most excellent fooling. There many of Planche's most sparkling

sques were no novelty to the town. We had had enough and to spare of them. W. J. Hammond, the original Sam Weller in the dramatized version of "Pickwick," had made people laugh in "Macbeth Travestie" and "Othello according to Act of Parliament." The Olympic burlesques were slightly funnier, and not nearly so coarse as their forerunners; but they were still of no striking salience. Poorly mounted, feebly played,-save in one particular,-they drew but thin houses. Gradually, however, you began to hear at clubs and in critical coteries-at the Albion and the Garrick and the Café de l'Europe, at Evans's and at Kilpack's, at the Réunion in Maiden Lane and at Rules's oyster-room, where poor Albert Smith used to reign supreme-rumors about a new ac

country-theatre,-that he had come timidly to London and accepted at a low salary the post of buffoon at a half-theatre half-saloon in the City Road, called indifferently the "Grecian" and the "Eagle," where he had danced and tumbled, and sung comic songs, and delivered the dismal waggeries set

ench seventy-four caught fire and was burned to the ground. Its ill-luck was consistent to the last. A poor actor, named Bender, had engaged the Olympic for a benefit. He was to pay twenty pounds for the use of the house. He had just sold nineteen pounds' worth of tickets, and trusted to the casual receipts at the door for his profits. At a few minutes before s

er as manager. He produced many pieces, some of them his own, in a most luxurious manner. He was a man about town, a viveur, a dandy; and it turned out one morning that Walter Watts had been, all along, a clerk in the Globe Insurance Office, at a salary of a hundred and fifty pounds a year; and that he had swindled his employers out of enormous sums of money. He was tried, nominally for stealing "a piece of paper, value one penny," being a check which he had abstracted;

ed in declaring that the ex-low-comedian of the Grecian had "something in him," eked it out by singing an absurd ditty called "Vilikins and his Dinah." The words and the air of "Vilikins" were, if not literally as old as the hills, considerably older than the age of Queen Elizabeth. The story told in the ballad, of a father's cruelty, a daughter's anguish, a sweetheart's despair, and the ultimate suicide of both the lovers, is, albeit couched in uncouth and grotesque language, as pathetic as the tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet." Robson gave every stanza a nonsensical refrain of "Right tooral lol

-merchant who in

ht tooral lol looral" into a speech delivered at the opening of circuit. Nor was the song all that was wonderful in Jem Baggs. His "make-up" was superb. The comic genius of Robson asserted itself in an inimitabl

atrabilious eyes glistened! You laughed, and yet you shuddered. He spoke in mere doggerel and slang. He sang trumpery songs to negro melodies. He danced the Lancashire clog-hornpipe; he rattled out puns and conundrums; yet did he contrive to infuse into all this mummery and buffoonery, into this salmagundi of the incongruous and the outré, an unmistakably tragic element,-an element of depth and strength and passion, and almost of sublimity. The mountebank became inspired. The Jack Pudding suddenly drew the cothurnus over his clogs. You were awe-stricken by the intensity, the vehemence, he threw into the mean balderdash of the burlesque-monger. These qualities were even more apparent in his subsequent

him. It may have been repugnant to his eminently sensitive spirit to exhibit the ludicrous aspect of the most dreadful of human infirmities. A peste, fame, bello, et dementia libera nos, Domine! Perhaps the piece itself was weak. At all events, "Masaniello" had but a brief run. A drunken man, a jealous man, a deaf man, a fool, a vagabond, a demon, a tyrant, Robson could marvellously depict: in the crazy Neapolitan fisherman he either failed or was unwilling to excel. I had been for a long period extremely solicitous to see Robson undertake the part of Sir Giles

y, and curious mastery of provincial dialect might admirably contrast with the melodramatic intensity, and the homely, but touching pathos of which in so eminent a degree he was the master. Hence the dramas, written expressly and deliberately to his measure and capacity, of "Daddy Hardacre," "The Porter's Knot," and "The Chimney-Corner." When I say written, I mean, of course, translated. Our foremost

nd as the lighthouse-keeper-the character originally sustained in private by Charles Dickens-in Wilkie Collins's play, domestic drama was not his forte; or, rather, that it was not his fortissimo. In fantastic burlesque, in the comic-terrible, he was unrivalled and inimitable. In the domestic drama he could hardly be surpassed, but he might be approached. Webster, Emery, Addison, could play Daddy Hardacre, or the father in "The Porter's Knot"; but none but himself could at once awe and convulse in Medea and the Yellow Dwarf. These domestic dramas interested, however, as much by their subject as by the excellence of his acting. Moreover, the public are apt sometimes to grow weary of burlesques,-their eternal grimacing and word-torturing and negro-singing and dancing. Themes for parody become exhausted, and, without long surcease, would not bear repetition. You may grow puns, like tobacco, until the soil is utterly worn out. T

ed. The health of the great tragi-comedian has gradually failed him. I have been for a long period without news from him; but I much fear that the heyday of his health and strength is past. The errors which made Edmund Kean, in the prime of life, a shattered wreck, cannot be brought home to Frederick Robson. Rumors, the wildest and the wickedest, have been circulated about him, as about every other public man; but, to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are wholly destitute of foundation. Don Basilio, in Beaumarchais's play, might have added some very pregnant advice to hi

a tax upon his time and energy as necessity imposed upon them when he was young. Dame Fortune, whether she smile, or whether she frown, never ceases to be a despot. Over Dives and over Lazarus she equally tyrannizes. In wealth and in poverty does she exact the pound of flesh or the pound of soul. There are seasons in a man's life when Fortune with a radiant savageness cries out to him, "Confound you! you shall make fifty thousand a year"; and she drives him onward to the goal quite as remorselessly

st notable of our drolls, Buckstone and Keeley, have been here, and have received a cordial welcome. But Robson has hitherto been lacking on this side the Atlantic. That he would be thoroughly appreciated by the theatrical public of America I cannot for one instant doubt. It is given to England to produce eccentrics, but for other nations to understand them better than the English do. The Germans are better critics of the satire of Hogarth, the French of the humor of Sterne, and the Americans of the philosophy of Shakspeare, than we to whose country those illustrious belong. In Boston, in New York, in Philadelphia, crowded and enthusiastic audiences would, I venture to foretell, hang on the utterances of Robson, and e

n the street, he used to blush crimson, and made as sudden a retreat round the nearest corner as was possible. He said afterwards that he hadn't the courage to thank me. I brought him to bay at last, and came to know him very well; and then I discovered how the nervousness, the bashfulness, the mauvaise honte, which made him so shy and retiring in private, stood him in wonderful stead on the stage. The nervous man became the fretful and capricious tyrant of mock tragedy; the bashful man

OADS OF GLEN R

the boldest speculation. To them natural philosophers have returned again and again to test their theories, and until they are fully understood no steady or permanent advance can be made in the various views which they have suggested to different observers. The theory of the formation of lakes by barriers, presented by McCulloch and Sir T. Lauder-Dick, that of continental upheavals and subsidences, advocated by Sir Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin, that of inundations by great floods, maintained by Prof

f them, now more than twenty years old, but which I have never had an opportunity of publish

ver existed at all in that realm. The reader will pardon me, if, at the risk of repetition, I sum up here the indications which, from our knowledge of glaciers as they at present exist, must be

ction, have several unfailing characteristics: they are highly polished, and they are also marked with scratches or fine stri?, with grooves and deeper furrows. Where best preserved, the smooth surfaces are shining; they have a lustre like stone or marble artifici

the hard materials set in the glacier, whether light and fine or strong and deep, are continuous, often unbroken for long distances, and rectilinear. Indeed, we have seen[A] that we have beneath every glacier a complete apparatus adapted to all the results described above. In the softer fragments ground to the finest powder under the incumbent mass we have a polishing paste; in the hard materials set in that paste, whether pebbles, or angular rocky fragments of different sizes, or grains of sand, we have the various graving instruments by which the finer or coarser lines are drawn. Not only are these lines frequently uninterrupted for a distance of many yards, but they are also parallel, except when some change takes place in the thickness of the ice, which may slightly modify the trend of the mass, or where lines in a variety of directions are

ea-bottom. Large boulders are frequently left by the ice along the New-England coast, and we shall trace them hereafter among the sand-dunes of Cape Cod. But before it can be admitted that the drift-phenomena, and the polished and engraved surfaces with which they are everywhere intimately associated, are owing to floating ice or icebergs, it must be shown that all these appearances have been produced by some agency moving from the sea-board towards the land, and extending up to the very summits of the mountains, or else that all the countries exhibiting glacial phenomena have been sunk below the ocean to the greatest height at which glacier-marks are found, and have since gradually emerged to their present level. Now, though geologists are lavish of immersions when

ot become acquainted with these marks in regions where glaciers no longer exist, and made a theory to explain their presence. I have, on the contrary, studied them where they are in process of formation. I have seen the glacier engrave its lines, plough its grooves and furrows in the solid rock, and polish the surfaces over

ened,-clay-slates will be wasted,-while hard sandstone or limestone and granite will show greater resistance. Not so with surfaces over which the levelling plough of the glacier has passed. Wherever softer and harder rocks alternate, they are brought to one outline; where dikes intersect softer rock, they are cut to one level with it; where rents or fissures traverse the rock, they do not seem to have been widened o

, overtopping the summits of the intervening prominences, and passing over them like a river, or like tide-currents flowing over a submerged ledge of rock. It is evident that water rushing over such sunken hills or ledges, adapting itself readily to all the inequalities over which it flows, and forming eddies against the obstacles in its course, will scoop out tortuous furrows upon the bottom, and hollow out rounded cavities against the walls, acting especially along pre?xisting fissures and upon the softer parts of the rock,-while the glacier, mo

e advancing glacier, the side against which the ice pressed in its onward movement,-while it passed over the other side, the lee side as we may call it, without coming in immediate contact with it, bridging the depression, and touching bottom again a little farther on. As an additional evidence of this fact, we frequently find on the lee side of such knolls accumulations of the loose materials which the glacier carries with it. It is only, however, when the knolls are quite high, and abrupt enough to allow any rigid subst

ever, an easy explanation in the glacial theory. The thickness of such a sheet of ice is of course less above such a hill or mound than over the lower levels adjoining it. Not only will the ice melt, therefore, more readily at this spot, but, as ice is transparent to heat, the summit of the prominence will become warmed by the rays of the sun, and will itself facilitate the melting of the ice above it. On the breaking up of the ice, therefore, such a spot will be the first to yield, and allow the boulders carried on the back of the glacier to fall into the hollow thus formed, where they will rest upon the projecting

rge boulders may sometimes be found in front of glaciers among the materials of their terminal moraines, and may, upon any advance of the glacier, be pushed forward by it. But I know of no example of erratic boulders being carried to considerable distances and raised from lower to higher levels by this means. All the angular boulders perched upon prominent rocks must have fallen upon the surface of the glacier in the upper part of its course, where rocky ledges rise above its surface and send down their broken fragments. The surface of any boulder carried under the ice, or

t sight, and distinguished from water-worn pebbles; nor is it difficult to distinguish both from loose materials resulting from the decomposition of rocks on the spot,-the latter always agreeing with the rocks on which they rest, while the decomposition to which they owe their separation from the solid rock is often still going on. Such débris are found everywhere about disintegrating rocks, and they constantly mingle with the loose fragments brought from a distance by various agencies. They are found upon and among th

ents. They simply rolled from the declivity, and stopped when they had exhausted the momentum imparted to them by their weight. In the case of the débacle of Bagnes, above Martigny, in a valley leading to the St. Bernard, the circumstances were very different. A glacier, advancing beyond its usual limits and rising against the opposite mountain-slope, dammed up the waters of the torrent and caused a lake to be formed. The obstruction gave way in the course of time, and the waters of the lake rushed out, carrying along with them huge boulders and a mass of loose materials of all sorts, and scattering them over the plain below. Such an accumulation of débris differs from the pebbles and loose fragments found in river-beds. The comparatively short distance over which they are carried, an

n rocks the abrasion of which may be traced to water. It is true that in some localities, as, for instance, in the gravel-pit of Mount Auburn, near Cambridge, large masses of glacier-worn pebbles alternate with beach-shingle; but it is easy to show that there was here a glacier advancing into the sea, crowding its front moraine and the mat

this point, because the great controversy among geologists respecting the nature and origin of the sheet of loose materials scattered over a great part of the globe turns upon it. The débris of which the drift consists are thrown together pell-mell, without any arrangement according to size or weight, larger and smaller fragments being mixed so indiscriminately that the heaviest materials may be on the very summit of the mass, and the lightest at the bottom in immediate contact with the underlying rock, or the larger pieces

ive deposits exhibit an imperfect cross-stratification resulting from changes in the height of the tide and the direction of the wind. Moreover, in any materials collected under water we find the heavier ones at the bottom, the lighter on the top. I

s the surfaces over which the glacier has passed. This is important to remember, because, when we examine the drift in countries where the ice, during the glacier-period, overtopped nearly all the mountains, so that few fragments could fall from them upon its surface, we find scarcely any angular boulders, while the dr

of the valley. That this is actually the case is seen in the lower course of the valley of the Rhone, where there are no transverse moraines, while they are frequent and undisturbed in the upper part of the valley. This is no doubt owing to the fact, that, when the main glacier had already retreated considerably up the valley, the lateral glaciers from the chains of the Combin and the Diablerets still reached the valley of the Rhone at a lower point, and barred the outlet of the waters from the glaciers above. A lake was thus formed, which, when the lower glaciers retreated up the lateral valleys, swept away all the lower transverse moraines, and formed the flat bottom of Martigny. In this case, the moraines

t a link is wanting to the chain. Polished surfaces, traversed by stri?, grooves, and furrows, with a sheet of drift resting immediately upon them, extend throughout the realm,-the roches moutonnées raise their rounded backs from the ground there as in Switzerland,-transverse moraines bar their valleys and lateral ones border them, and the boulders

trace whatever, nor is there any indication that either of the three ever existed in the western half of the valley. When I first visited the region, these phenomena had already been the subject of earnest discussion among English geologists. The commonly accepted explanation of the facts was that these terraces marked ancient sea-levels at a time when the ocean penetrated much farther into the interior, and Glen Roy and the adjoining valleys were as many fiords or estuaries. And though the present elevation of the locality made such an interpretation improbable at first sight, the first or highest of the terraces being eleven hundred and forty-four feet above the present sea-level, the second eighty-two feet below the first, and the third and lowest two hundred and twelve feet below the second, or eight hundred odd feet above the level of the sea, it was thought that the oscillations of the land, its alternate subsidences and upheavals, proved by the modern results of geology to have been so great and so frequent, might account even for so remarkable a change. There are, however, other objections to this theory not so easily explained away. There are no traces of organic life upon these terraces. If they were ancient sea-beaches, w

e roches moutonnées I have seen in Scotland are to be found at the entrance of the valley of Loch Treig, a lateral valley opening into Glen Spean on its southern side, and, as we shall see hereafter, intimately connected with the history of the parallel roads of Glen Roy. These roches moutonnées may very fairly be compared with those of the Grimsel, and exhibit all the characteristic features of the Alpine ones. One of them, lying on the western side of the valley where it opens into Glen Spean, is crossed by a trap-dike. The general surface of the hill, consisting of rather soft mica, has been slightly worn down by atmospheric agencies, so that the dike stands out some three-quarters of an inch above it. On the

case is correct, must have covered the whole country at this time, the ice would yield more readily in a valley like that of Glen Roy, lying open to the south and receiving the full force of the sun, than in those on the opposite side of Glen Spean, opening to the north. At all events, it is evident that at some time posterior to this universal glacial period, when the ice began to retreat, Glen Roy became the basin of a glacial lake such as we now find in the Alps of Switzerland, where occasionally a closed valley becomes a trough, as it were, into which the water from the surrounding hills is drained. In such

oss-tracks carefully, I became satisfied, that, after the surrounding ice had begun to yield, after the masses of ice which descended from the northern and southern slopes of the mountains into Glen Spean had begun to retreat, and to form local limited glaciers, two of those lateral glaciers, one coming down from Ben Nev

ermanent marks of its outflow into the Great Glen, except by disturbing and remodelling the large moraines of the older Glen Spean glacier. There are faint indications of other terraces in Glen Roy, even at a higher level than the uppermost parallel road, owing their origin probably to the short duration of a higher level of the glacier-lake, when the great general glacier had not yet been lowered to a more permanent level determined by a limited circumscrip

rom the Bernese Oberland and from the valleys of the Reuss and Limmath gigantic glaciers came down and stretched across the plain of Switzerland to the Jura, scattering their erratic boulders over its summit and upon its slopes at the time of their greater extension, and, as they withdrew into the higher Alpine valleys, leaving them along their retreating track at the foot of the Jura and over the whole plain, so did the glaciers from Glen Prossen and parallel valleys on the Grampian Mountains extend across the valley of Strathmore, dropping their boulders not only on the slopes and along the base of the Sidlaw Hills, but scattering them in their retreat throughout the valley, until they were themselves reduced to isolated glaciers in the higher valleys. At the same time other glaciers came down from the heights of Schihallion on the west, and, descending through the valley of the Tay, joined the great masses of ice in the valley of Strathmore, thus combining

s with their distinct grooves and scratches show us the path followed by the ice as it moved down in a northeasterly direction toward the Frith of Forth from the mountains o

gins the most distinct glacial polish and furrows, while from the trend of these marks and the distribution of the moraines, especially about Ben Cruachan, it is obvious that in th

ays, within the valley-walls, nevertheless once covered the plain of Switzerland and that of Northern Italy, so did the ice-fields of the Grampians during the greatest extension of the Scotch glaciers spread over the whole country. They also were, in course of time, reduced to local glaciers, circumscribed within the higher valleys of the more mountainous parts of the country, until they totally disappeared, as those of Switzerland would also have done, h

inburgh. In Northumberland, the Cheviot Hills present a glacial centre of the same kind, and in the Westmoreland Hills we have still another. In the last-named locality, the glacial tracks can be followed in various directions, some of them descending toward the northwest from the heights of Helvellyn, others moving southward toward Ambleside. In Wales the same kind of glacial distrib

of the five valleys rising towards the mountain-slope, it cuts alternately through the two horns of a crescent-shaped wall which bars the lower end of every one of them. These crescent-shaped mounds are so many terminal moraines, built up by the five glaciers formerly descending through these lateral valleys into the valley of Loch Nilly. They bore the same relation to each other as the glaciers de Tour and d'Argentière, the Glacier des Bois with the Mer de Glace, the Glacie

rough the transparent medium, I have noticed in Great Britain and in the United States the same traces of glacial action as higher up, so that these ancient glaciers must have extended not only to the sea-shore, but into the ocean, as they do now in Greenland. Nor is this all. Scandinavian boulders, scattered upon English soil and over the plains of Northern Germany, tell us that not only the Baltic Sea, but the German Ocean also, was bridged across by ice, on which these masses of rock were transported. In short, over the whole of Northern Europe, from the Arctic Ocean to the northern borders of its southern promontories, we find all

consider the glacial phenom

TNO

anuary No

ated by N. The dotted area between N. and M. marks the place occupied by the great glacier of Ben Nevis, when it extended as far as Moeldhu; while the close continuous lines in front of Loch Treig indicate the direction of the glacial scratches left across Glen Spean by the glacier of Loch Treig, when it extended as far as the eastern termination of the two upper terraces. It ought to be remembered, in this connection, that the bottom of the valley of the Spean, as well as that of Glen Roy, is occupied by loose materials, partly drift, that is, materials acted upon by glaciers, and partly decomposed fragments of rocks brought down by the torrents, greatly impeding the observation of the polished surfaces. The river-bed is cut through this deposit, and here and there through the underlying rock. Besides the parallel roads, there are also peculiar accumulations of loose materials in Glen Roy and Glen Spean, more particularly connected with the lowest terrace, which Mr. Darwin and Professor Jamieson have shown to be little deltas formed during the exi

er from Loch Laggan nearly to the Caledonian Canal. I publish my observations upon this great central glacier for the first time in the present article, having omitted them in my contributions upon this subject to the scientific periodicals of the day simply because I thought best not to complicate my exposition of the facts concerning the parallel roads by considerations foreign to their origin, convinced as I was, from the manner in which the glacial theory was then received, that they would not be understood, and still less admitted. But now that all the geologists of Great Britain seem to have given their adhesion to it, I may be permitted to state that I already knew then, what Professor Jamieson has overlooked in his latest paper, that a separate glacier had occupied the valley of the Spean prior to the formation of the parallel roads, and that at that time the glacier of Loch Treig was only a lateral tributary of the same, just as the glacier of the Thierberg is a tributary of the glacier of the Aar. It was not until the Glen Spean glacier had retreated to the hills east of Loch Laggan that the glacier of Loch Treig could form a barrier across Glen Spean, and thus dam the waters in Glen Roy which produced the parallel roads. The marks left by the great Glen Spean glacier in the valley are mistaken by Professor Jamieson for indications, that, in its greatest extension, the glacier of Loch Treig

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il April again. The only change of stockings there is from wet to dry, or from soiled to clean. Save that in so-called winter frequent rainfalls alternate with spotless intervals of amber weather, and that soi-disant summer is one entire amber mass, its unbroken divine days concrete in it, there is no inequality on which to forbid the banns between May and December. In San Francisco there is n

ul laborer indeed. But fruit also literal: for what joy of vegetation is lacking to the man who every month in the year can look through his study-window on a green lawn, and have strawberries and cream for hi

onstrained to say that I have never, even in New York, seen its equal for elegance of appointment, attentiveness of servants, or excellence of cuisine. Having come to this extreme of civilizatio

ves as it was honorable to them. Need I say whose brotherly hands were among the very first outstretched to us, in whose happy home we found our sweetest rest, by whose radiant face and golden speech we were most lovingly detained evening after evening and far into the night? A few days ago when we read that dreadful message, "Starr King is dead," the lightning that carried it seemed to end in our

promised. They look hard-worked, but they look like me. Good bye! God bless you! I hope to make

hat great, that good, that beloved man faded from our sight,-but, oh! never from our hearts, either in the here or the hereafter. "We shall see him, but not now

t opportunity of close daily intercourse with his sweet spirit, though we were grievously disappointed when h

ecipices. As for the two former subjects of comparison, we never met any tourist who could adjust the question from his own experience; but the superiority of the Yo-Semite to the Alpine cataracts was a matter put beyond doubt

lamations of awe at Goupil's window, and ecstasy in Dr. Holmes's study. At Goupil's counter and in Starr King's drawing-room we had gazed on them by the hour already,-I, let me confess it

her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Ph?nix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her "skeleton" behind her. The bachelor who cares to see

party wore to the Yo-Semite. Otherwise, we took the oldest clothes we had,-and it is not difficult to find that variety in the trunk of a recent overland stager. We were armed with Ballard rifles, shot-guns, and Colt's revolvers which had come with us across the continent; our ammunition we got in San Francisco, together with all such commissariat-luxuries as were worth transportation: our necessaries we left to be purchased at that jumping-off place of civil

n 'Change and his seat in the next Congress. The nation of beggars-on-horseback which first colonized California has left behind it many traditions unworthy of conservation, and multitudinous fleas not at all traditional, but even less keepworthy; but all honor be to the Spaniards, Greasers, and Mixed-Breeds for having rooted the noble idea of horsemanship so firmly in the country that even street-railroads cannot uproot it, and that Americans who never sat even so little as an Atlantic-State's pony, on coming here presently take to the saddle with all their hearts. In most of the smaller Californian towns, a very serviceable half- or quarter-breed saddle-horse is to be had for forty dollars,-the "breed" portion of his blood being drawn f

d suburban roads cannot be imagined. It is not for a day, but for all time, and for those who spend nearly the latter in it. Its wooden skeleton is as scientifically fitted to the rider's form as an old "incroyable's" pair of pantaloons. There is no such thing as getting tired in or of it. Rising to the lower lumbar verte

hrough or the ankle to foul under any circumstances. Attached to the straps from which these swing is a wide and neatly ornamented stirrup-leather, which effectually prevents the grazing of the rider's leg. The surcingle, or, Californicè, the cinch, is a broad strip of hair-cloth with a padded ri

on the opposite side of the neck from that in which one seeks to turn him. Our Eastern way of drawing his head around would so lift the bit as to drive him frantic. There are very few horses of any breed, even the Mustang, that never stumble; and as I prefer lifting my horse to letting him break his knees or neck, I wan

om many tributaries, which debouches between the Columbia and the Isthmus,-and that rises east of the mathematical axis of the Rocky Mountains. The Yo-Semite valley is one of the cradles through which the short Sierra-draining rivers reach the ocean; its threading stream is the Merced; and if on any good United-States Survey-map you will please to follow that river back to the mountains, when your finger-nail touches the Sierra it will be (or would, were the maps somewhat correcter) in the Great Yo-Semite. You will then see that our course led us across three streams, after leaving the San Joaquin at Stockton en route for Mariposa,-the Stanislaus, the Tuolomne, and the Main Merced. The distance from Stockton to Mariposa is about one hundred miles, a small part of the way between fenced ranches, a much grea

s in the high valleys of the Sierra,-or ought to be: many cattle died along the San Joaquin last summer for want of this care. Occasionally the road winds through the refreshing shadow of a grove of live-oaks, standing far from any water on a sandy knoll. But the most magnificent trees of the oak family that I ever beheld were growing on the banks of the Tuolomne River, where we forded it at Roberts's Ferry. They were not merely in dimension superior to the finest white-oaks of the East, but surpassed in beauty ev

our wagon-load to their backs, (the average mule-pack weighs from two hundred and fifty to three hu

numbered two young artists of great merit now sojourning for a short time in California, Williams, an old Roman, and Perry,

it for the catch we wanted. He was a meagre, wiry fellow, with sandy hair, serviceable-looking hands, and no end to self-recommendations; but then it was impossible to ask after him at his "last place," that having been General Johnston's camp during Buchanan's forcible-feeble occupation of Utah. As he said he had been a teamster, and knew that soup-meat went into cold water, we rushed blindly into an engagement with him, marriage-service fashion, and took him for better or wo

tee and prochein amy to an orphan family of mules. At fifteen years and in jackets, he was one of the keenest speculators in fire-arms I ever saw;

ith which a Yankee always cuts his first swath into the tall grass of Barbarism. Passing the saw-mill in the very act of astonishing the wilderness with a dinner-whistle, we struck a trail and fell into single file. Thenceforward our way was almost a continuous alternation of descent and climb over outlying ridges of the Sierra. Our raw-recruited mules, and the elementary

old grizzly-hunter and miner of the '49 days, wears a noble full beard hued like his favorite game, but no head-covering of any kind since he recovered from a fever which left his head intolerant of even a slouch. He lives among folk, near Mariposa, in the winter, an

s at a time running through forests where trees one hundred and fifty feet high were very common and trees of two h

but that is only because they fail to realize the proposition. They have no concrete idea of how the asserted proportions look. Tell a carpenter, or any other man at home with the look of dimensions, what you have seen in the Mariposa-County groves, and his eye grows incredulous in a moment. I f

n seventy and eighty; two between eighty and ninety; two between ninety and one hundred; two are just one hundred; and one is one hundred and two. This last, before the storms truncated it, had a height of four hundred feet. I found a rough ladder laid against its trunk,-for it is prostrate,-and climbed upon its side by that and steps cut

ence! Estimates, grounded on the well-known principle of yearly cortical increase, indisputably throw back the birth of these largest giants as far as 1200 B. C. Thus their tender saplings were running up just as the gates of Troy were tumbling down, and some of them had fulfilled the lifetime of the late Hartford Charter-Oak when Solomon called his master-masons to refreshment from the building of the Temple. We cannot realize time-images as we can those of space by a reference to dimensions within experience, so that the age of these marvellous trees still remains to me an incomprehensible fact, though with my mind's eye I continue to see how mountain-massy they look, and how dwarfed is the man who leans against them. We lingered among them half a day, the artists making color-studies of the most picturesque, the rest of us izing away at something scientific,-Botany, Entomology, or Statistics. In Geology and Mineralogy there is nothing to do here or in the Valley,-the formation all being typical Sierra-Nevada granite, with no specimens to keep or pr

fork of the Merced which flows through his valley. For twelve miles farther a series of tremendous climbs tasked us and our beasts to the utmost, but brought us quite apropos at dinner-time to a lovely green meadow walled in on one side by near snow-peaks. A small brook running through it speedily furnished us with f

urple deer-weed, a magnificent scarlet flower of name unknown to me, and another blossom like the laburnum, endlessly varied in its shades of roseate, blue, or the compromised tints, made the hill-sides gorgeous beyond human gardening. All these were scentless; but one other flower, much rarer, made

om that crag of vision a new scene on the old familiar globe as a new heaven and a new earth into which the creative spirit had just been breathed. I hes

distance baffled all visual computation. Its foot was hidden among hazy green spicul?-they might be tender spears of grass catchi

hits a man fair and square, it splits his yardstick. On recovering from this stroke, mathematicians have ascert

of purple twilight flushing the eastern sky-rim-yes, as if it were the very butment of the eternally blue Californian heaven-ran that wall, always sheer as the plummet, without a visible break through which squirrel might climb or sparrow fly,-so broad that it was just faint-lined like the paper on which I write by the loftiest waterfall in the world,-so lofty that its very breadth could not dwarf it, w

unblemished four-square contour of the entire mass than a pin-mark from the symmetry of a door-post. A city might have been built on its grand flat top. And, oh! the gorgeous masses of light and shadow which the falling sun cast on it,-the shadows like great waves, the lights like their spumy tops and flying mist,-thrown up from the heaving breast of a golden sea! In California at this season the dome of heaven is cloudless; but I

hide its vast proportions. This we immediately recognized as the famous To-coy-?, better known through Watkins's photographs as the Great North Dome. I am ignorant of the meaning of the former name, but the latter i

termination of our view opposite the North Dome. Here the precipice rises to the height of nearly one sheer mile with a parabolic sky-line, and its posterior surface is as elegantly rounded as an acorn-cup. From this contour results a naked semi-cone of polished granite, whose face would cover one of our smaller Eastern counties, though its exquisite proportions make it seem a thing to hold in the hollow of the hand. A small pine-covered glacis of detritus lies at its foot, but every yard above that is bare of all life save the pal?ozoic memories which have wrinkled the granite Colossus from the earliest seethings of the fire-time. I never could call a Yo-Semite crag inorganic, as I used to speak of everything not strictly animal or vegetal. In the presence of the Great South Dome that utterance became blasphemous. Not living was it? Who knew but the débris at i

ndian legend than that of Tis-sa-ack. I will condense it into a few short sentences from the long report of an old Yo-Semite brave. Tis-sa-ack

s the mont

ack. Full of anguish at her nation's woes, she rose from her lover's arms, and cried for succor to the Great Spirit. Then, with a terrible noise of thunder, the mighty cone split from heaven to earth,-its frontal half falling down to dam the snow-waters back into a lake, whence to this day the beautiful Valley-stream takes one of its loveliest branches,-its other segment remaining er

You may lose a rough fact because everybody is handling it and passing it around with the sense of a liberty to present it next in his own way; but a fact with its facets cut-otherwise a poem-is unchangeable, imperditable. Seeing it has been manufactured once, nobody tries to make it o

le suffusion of glory created from the ph?nix-pile of the dying sun. Here it lies almost as treeless as some rich old clover-mead; yonder, its luxuriant smooth grasses give way to a dense wood of cedars, oaks, and pines. Not a living creature, either man or beast, breaks the visible silence of this inmost paradise; but for ourselves, standing at the precipice, petrified, as it were, rock on rock, the great world might well be running back in stone-and-grassy dreams to the hour when God had given him as yet but two daughters, the crag and the clover. We were breaking

of endless roof-walking was the descent down the face of the precipice. A painful and most circuitous dug-way, where our animals had constantly to stop, lest their impetus should tum

n might be found in ropes seventy feet long fastened to deep-driven pickets. We soon got together dead wood and pitchy boughs enough to kindle a roaring fire,-made a kitchen-table by wedging logs between the trunks of a three-forked tree, and thatching these wit

considered as slapjacks and coffee. Then the loyal nephew of the Secesh governor and the testamentary guardian of the orphan mules brought our horses up from picket; then the artists with their camp-stools and color-boxes, the sages with their

heir results, I will assert that during their seven weeks' camp in the Valley they learned more and gained greater material for future triumphs than they had gotten in all their lives before at the feet of the greatest masters.

yperbola over that of a parabola in the cast of a fly,-who call three little troutlings "a splendid day's sport, me boy!" because those rash and ill-advised infants have been deceived by a feather-bug which never would have been of any use to them, instead of a real worm which would. We, who can make prettier curves and deceive larger game in a dancing-party a

to a small branch of the Merced, where you don't want to go. Then, too, if you slip down and leave your horse standing while you steal on a giant Papilio which is sucking the deer-weed in such a sweet spot for a cast, your horse (perhaps he has heard of the French general who said, "Asses and savans to the centre!") may discover that he also is a sage, and retire to botanize while you are butterflying,-a contingency which entails your wading the Merced after him five several ti

being carried out to them at noon by our Infant Phenomenon. He was a skeleton of thinness, and an incredibly gaunt mustang was the one which invariably carried the lunch; so we used to call the boy, when we saw him coming, "Death on the Pail-Horse." At evening,

est of compliments to him that I could get thoroughly interested in her lover, when he bore the name of one of

ORY OF

ehind him, a list of purchases, and eighty golden dollars, bidding him good-speed on the trail to Mariposa. He was to return laden with all the modern equivalents for corn

camped there about noon on the day he left us, turned his horse and mule loose, instead of picketing them, and spent the rest of the sunlight in a siesta. Whe

triumph to Mariposa. There I arrived at eight in the evening of the day I left the Valley,-having performed fifty miles of the hardest mountain-trail that was ever travelled in a little less than twelve hours, makin

golden dollars at a single session of bluff,-departed gayly for Coulterville, where he sold Clark's horse at auction for forty dollars, including saddle and bridle, and immediately at another game of bluff lost the entire purchase-money to the happy buyer,

e bottom of the flour-bag, after living for three days on unleavened slapjacks without either butter or sirup. I have seen people who professed to relish the Jewish Passover-bread; but, after such an experience as our party's, I venture to say they would have regarded it worthy of a place among the other abolished types of the Mosaic dispensation. As for me and the mule,

proper, or, in the Indian, "Cho-looke." By the most recent geological surveys this fall is credited with the astounding height of twenty-eight hundred feet. At an early period the entire mass of water must have plunged that distance without break. At this day a single ledge of slant projection changes the headlong flood from cataract to rapids for about four hundred feet; but the unbroken

h the stream breaks from its feeding-lake twelve or fifteen miles before it falls. The savage lowers his voice to a whisper and crouches trembling past Po-ho-nó; while the very utterance of the name is so dreaded by him that the discoverers of the Valley obtained it with great difficulty. This fall drops on a heap of giant boulders in one unbroken sheet of a thousand feet perpendicular, thus being the next in height among all the Valley-cataracts to the Yo-Semite

a nobly bold, but nameless rock, three thousand feet in height. Near by is Sentinel Rock, a solitary truncate pinnacle, towering to thirty-three hundred feet. A little farther are "Eleachas," o

as something for which an artist apt to oversleep himself might well have sat up all the night. No such precaution was needed by ourselves. Painters, sages, and gentlemen at large, all turned out by dawn; for the studies were grander, the grouse and quail plentier, and the butterflies more gorgeous than we found in any other portion of the Valley. After passing the great cleft eastward, I found the river more enchanting at

and along its banks lies our course to the great "Pi-wi-ack" (senselessly Englished as "Vernal") and the Nevada Falls. For three miles from our camp opposite the Yo-Semite Fall the ca?on is threaded by a trail practicable for horses. At its termination we dismounted, sent back our animals, and, strapping their loads upon our own shoulders, struck nearly eastward by a path only less rugged than the trackless crags around us. In so

n one unbroken leap came down Pi-wi-ack from a granite shelf nearly four hundred feet in height and sixty feet in perfectly horizontal width. Some enterprising speculator, who has since ceased to take the original seventy-five cents' toll, a few years ago built a substantial set of rude ladders against the perpendicular wall over which Pi-wi-ack rushes. We found it still standing, and climbed the dizzy height in a shower of spray, so close to the edge of the fall that

zanita may catch hold and grow. This tilted formation, broken here and there by spots of scanty alluvium and stunted pines, continues upward till it intersects the posterior cone of the South Dome on one side and a colossal castellated precipice on the other,-creating thus the ve

e and there of the snowy fretwork of churned water which laced the higher rocks, and the black whirls which s

sing volume, but mainly to its exquisite and unusual shape. It falls from a precipice the highest portion of whose face is as smoothly perpendicular as the wall overleapt by Pi-wi-ack; but invisibly beneath its snowy flood a ledge slants sideways f

ent causes of power. There lie the broad, still pools that hold the reserved affluence of the snow-peaks; thence might we see, glittering like diamond lances in the sun, the eternal snow-peaks themselves. But these would still be as far above us as we stood below Yo-wi-ye on the lowest valley-bottom whence we came. Even from Inspiration Point, where our trail first struck the battlement, we could see far beyond the Valley to the rising sun, toweri

ost treasure-house, Yo-wi-ye answers us ere we turn back fr

e Highest, lo, the High

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