of it. And not till Nature shall consent to open some of her choicest secrets to our view, shall we absolutely learn, that we have as much merit in our relative success, as a seed has in reference to its flower; an egg to its bird; or a child to its manhood. Part of the time, which you have devoted to the acquirement of wealth, I have devoted to literature and science. Many are the remonstrances, you have sent me; and many are the resolutions, I have formed, to quit the bower of philosophy. Those remonstrances and resolutions, you will be sorry to hear, have been too weak in their operation, to check the bias of my inclinations; and the force, or, as you may be pleased to call it, the folly of my nature.

IV.

Few, who have witnessed the solemn beauties of Valle Crucis, can do justice to their character. Reclining among its scattered fragments, how interesting, how powerful, how captivating are the associations, which arise in the mind, when we reflect upon the storms those fragments have weathered; and on the vast numbers, who, from year to year, have experienced the same emotions, and made the same reflections with ourselves. While surveying those awful characters of ruined faith, who does not hear the solemn dirge, and sacred requiem, chaunted over the grave of a lovely, unfortunate, and lamented sister?

Departed soul, whose poor remains
This hallowed, lowly, grave contains;

Musing on this slumber of forgetfulness, with what awe do we contrast its silence and its solitude with that sacred time, when the pealing anthem and the choral hymn have echoed through the woods; and, ascending in symphonious columns, the silent and devout have listened, till the sounds, dying away in undulating murmurs, have appeared, not as if they had ceased to echo; but as if the form of humanity alone prevented the listener from gliding with them, even to the gates of heaven.

V.

Ruins affect us in various different ways. In ENGLAND they indicate the wealth, the power, and the pride of nobility: in SCOTLAND they bear evidence to the prowess of petty chieftains: in WALES they are monuments of irritable families-of frantic passions; of refuges from predatory excursions; of forts to annoy invaders; and of retreats to make the last stand of defence. In FRANCE they are witnesses of religious quarrels; and in GERMANY of feudal tyranny. In ITALY they exhibit medals of—every description: the rise and decay of taste and of genius; the splendour and the meanness of large states and diminutive re

publics; savage amusements; elegant accomplishments; ferocious banditti; patrons of the nobler arts; the former existence of many kingdoms; the simplicity of a rude and innocent people; and a nobility of peasants':-the prisons of papal tyranny; the magnificence of an empire, shining in its zenith; and the pride of barbarians, striking it with their battle-axes, and reducing it to ruin.

There are many persons, even of information, who will gaze with admiration, and enquire what this term means :-Coltou shall illustrate the propriety of the term. "In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self denial, as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great :—an heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many, or the admiration of the few ;-yet flourishing amidst ruins, and on the confines of the grave. A spectacle as stupendous in the moral world, as the falls of the Missouri in the natural : and like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur, only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnificence.”

VOL. IV.

BOOK XII.

CHAPTER I.

Is it possible, my Lelius, to travel where Nature does not speak to us? If we coast the shores of the Mediterranean, or behold the sun, setting in unclouded majesty in the Adriatic; if we inhale the temperate⚫ breezes of the Levant, or drink the odours, wafted by the winds over an Arabian sea; if we measure the vastness of the Pacific, encounter the snows of the Northern, or the ices of the Antarctic ocean,—still do we behold Nature operating on her usual plan; her laws still fixed; her bounty still munificent. What ambrosial ideas of long, unbroken, universal slumbers. fasten on the mind; when, as we muse along the seashore, the waters touch the beach without a murmur; and our spirit seems, as if it were capable of gliding to eternity, on the tranquil surface of the deep! In the east, the moon, rising like an immense exhalation, tinges the edges of the clouds with many a golden tint; and reflects her serene countenance on the bosom of the waters.-All is still.-To the north a distant cloud suspends in the horizon! Its blue tints gradually shade into a deep sable; thunder murmurs in remote volumes; the sea appears, for a while, to listen; its waves at length begin insensibly

to agitate; its bosom swells; the waves break; the cliffs are whitened by the surf; while the caves and rocks re-echo with the roar! It is a scene, which the good man contemplates with awful pleasure; the conqueror with a mixture of awe and terror; the atheist with fear, with horror and dismay.

II.

Scenes, like these, observed in whatever part of the globe,-in common with ample solitudes,-create the most enlarged ideas of that infinity, in which the Eternal centres; in whom it originates; and to whom it is alone reserved to calculate its boundless measure. Extension being one source of the sublime, that science, which most expands our faculties of comprehension, is undoubtedly that, which is, in itself, the most noble and the most transporting. Nothing, therefore, can more indicate the vastness of those powers, which Nature has implanted in man, than the faculty of investigating the several branches of natural philosophy; and, above all, that most wonderful of all the sciences,-Astronomy: The science of devotion; the science of an awful silence; a silence more sublime even than that, which reigns in the bay of Port des Français, on the north-west coast of America.—These mountains rear themselves to an immense height; while no verdure, no plant, form a contrast to the snows of their peaks.. All seem condemned to eternal sterility. The bottom of this bay is so deep, that no line can fathom it. The air is tranquil; the surface of the sea unruffled;