You, whom I taught to shed for France your tears, Dear cherish'd object, when my honors vain, And, good old dame, beside the cheerful fire, St. Louis, March 12, 1834. W. H. C. ART. 4.-ICOLMKILL, STAFFA, AND FINGAL'S CAVE. BY JOHN KEATS. My Dear Tom,-Just after my last had gone to the post, in came one of the men with whom we endeavored to agree about going to Staffa. He said what a pity it was that we should turn aside and not see the curiosities; so we had a little talk, and finally agreed that he should be our guide across the Isle of Mull. We set out, crossed two ferries, one to the Isle of Kenara of little distance, the other, from Kenara to Mull, nine miles across. We did it in forty minutes with a fine. breeze. The road through the island, or rather the track, is the most dreary you can think of-between dreary mountains, over bog and rock, and river, with our breeches tucked up, and our stockings in hand. About 8 o'clock, we arrived at a shepherd's hut, into which we could scarcely get for the smoke, through a door lower than my shoulders. We found our way into a little compartment, with the Rafters and turf thatch blackened with smoke-the earth floor full of hills and dales. We had some white bread with us, made a good supper, and slept in our clothes in some blankets. Our guide snored on another little bed about an arm's-breadth off. This morning we came about sax miles to breakfast, by rather a better path, and we are now in, by comparison, a mansion. Our guide is, I think, a very obliging fellow. In the way this morning he sang us two Gaelic songs, one made by a Mrs. Brown, on her husband's being drowned, the other a Jacobin one on Charles Stuart. For some days, Brown has been enquiring out his genealogy here. He thinks his grand-father came from Long Island. He got a parcel of people about him at a cottage door last evening, chatted with one who had been a Miss Brown, and who, I think, from a likeness, must be a relation. He talked with the old woman-flattered a young one-kissed a child who was afraid of his spectacles, and finally drank a pint of milk. They handle his spectacles as we do a sensitive leaf. July 26. Well, we had a most wretched walk of it 37 miles across the Island of Mull, and then we crossed to Iona or Icolmkill; from Icolmkill, we took a boat at a bargain to take us to Staffa, and land us at the rear of Loch Nagal, where we should only have to walk half the distance to Obanagain, and on a better road. All this is well passed and done, with this singular piece of luck, that there was an intermission in the bad weather just as we saw Staffa, at which it is impossible to land but in a tolerable calm sea. But I will first mention Icolmkill. I know not whether you ever heard much about this Island; I never did before I came nigh it; it is rich in the most interesting antiquities. Who would expect to find the ruins of a fine cathedral church, of cloister colleges, monasteries and nunneries in so remote an island? The beginning of these things was in the sixteenth century, under the superstition of a would be Bishop-saint, who landed from Ireland, and chose the spot for its beauty; for at that time the now treeless place was covered with magnificent woods. Columba in the Gaelic is Colm, signifying dove; Kill signifies church; and I is as good as Island; so I-colm-kill means the Island of St. Columba's Church. Now this Saint Columba became the Dominic of the Barbarian Christians of the North, and was famed also far south; but more especially was reverenced by the Scots, the Picts, the Norwegians, the Irish. In the course of years, perhaps, the Island was considered the most holy ground of the north, and the old kings of the above mentioned nations chose it for their burial place. We were shown a spot in the churchyard where they say 61 kings are buried-41 Scotch from Fergus 2d to Macbeth, 8 Irish, 4 Norwegian, and one French. They lie in rows compact. Then we were shown other matters of later date, but still very ancient-many tombs of Highland chieftains, their effigies in complete armour, face upwards, black and moss-covered-abbots and bishops of the Island always one of the chief clans. There were plenty of Macleans moss. and Macdonnels, among these latter the famous Macdonnel, Lord of the Isles. There have been 300 crosses in the Island, but the Presbyterians destroyed all but two; one of which is a very fine one and completely covered with a shaggy coarse The old schoolmaster, an ignorant little man, but reckoned very clever, showed us these things. He is a Maclean, and is as much above four foot as he is under four foot three inches. He stops at one glass of whiskey unless you press another, and at the second, unless you press the third. I am puzzled how to give you an idea of Staffa; it can only be represented by a first rate drawing. One may compare the surface of the Island to a roof-this roof supported by grand pillars of basalt, standing together as thick as honey-combs. The finest thing is Fingal's Cave; it is entirely a hollowing out of basalt pillars. Suppose now the giants who rebelled against Jove, had taken a whole mass of black columns and bound them together like bunches of matches, and then with immense axes had made a cavern in the body of these columns— of course the roof and floor must be composed of the open ends of the columns-such is Fingal's Cave, except that the sea has done the work of excavation, and is continually dashing there, so that we walk along the sides of the cave on the pillars, which are left as if for convenient stairs. The roof is arched somewhat Gothic-wise, and the length of some of the entire side-pillars is 50 feet. About the Island you might seat an army of men each on a pillar. The length of the cave is 120 feet, and from its extremity is a view into the sea through the large arch at the entrance. The color of the columns is a sort of black with a lurking gloom of purple therein. For solemnity and grandeur it far surpasses the finest cathedral. At the extremity of the cave there is a small perforation into another cave, at which, the waters meeting and buffetting each other, sometimes produces a report as of a cannon, heard as far as Iona, which must be 12 miles. As we approached in the boat, there was such a fine swell of the sea, that the pillars appeared rising immediately out of the crystal. But it is impossible to describe it. Not Aladdin Magian As I stood its roofing under. What is this, and what art thou? "I have been the pontiff priest "Such a taint and soon unweave I am sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as thisit can't be helped. The western coast of Scotland is a most strange place; it is composed of rocks, mountains, and mountainous and rocky Islands, intersected by Lochs. You can go but a small distance any where from salt water in the Highlands. ART. 5.-WISDOM OF TOLERATION. STRIKING EXTRACT FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. We will not be deterred by any fear of misrepresentation from expressing our hearty approbation of the mild, wise, and eminently Christian manner in which the church and the government have lately acted with respect to blasphemous publications. We praise them for not having thought it necessary to encircle a religion pure, merciful and philosophical,—a religion to the evidences of which the highest intellects have yielded, with the defences of a false and bloody superstition. The ark of God was never taken till it was surrounded with the arms of earthly defenders. In captivity, its sanctity was sufficient to secure it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength, that is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences and the attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime theology confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Cæsars found their arms and their policy unavailing when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain, is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have in this age directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of the Christian religion shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes did her author. They bow the knee and spit upon her; they cry, Hail! and smite her on the check; they put a sceptre into her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her; and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain. ART. 6.-INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE ON CIV. ILIZATION. From the Posthumous Works of Goethe, Vol. 13, p. 81. The great reverence which the Bible has received from many nations and races of the world, it owes to its inward worth. It is not merely a national work, but the book of the nations. For it makes the fate of one people the symbol for all others, knits their history with that of the earth's creation, and proceeds through a gradation of earthly and spiritual developements, of necessary and accidental events, on to the extreme regions of remotest eternity. Whoever is acquainted with the human heart, and the mode by which individual minds are formed, will not deny the possibility of a strong minded man's getting a good education |