It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's flag occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over its military triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on account of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and because it operates as an accumulative inducement to future generations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of all men's memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure, if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated names.

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver I had in my. pocket, to requite him for having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with a humble freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seem to be more accostable than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful voice, and gentle, reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had now been in the hospital four or five years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a separation from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, "Oh, yes, Sir!" qualifying his evidence, after a moment's consideration, by saying, in an undertone, "There are some people, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable anywhere." I did know it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care and regulation of their own occupations and interests which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by giving them something external to think about. But my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo.

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure,—an air-castle by chance descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch unharmed on the carpet,—a thing of only momentary visibility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt 'a picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I try to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depleted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images; it is an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often been more successful in representing definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not for any real information that it supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recollections and reawakening the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tuckerman's "Month in England,"—a fine example of the way in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, however, states of mind produced by interesting and remarkable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though but the result of what we see, go farther towards representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get something like a simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From some of the above reflections I draw the comfortable inference, that, the longer and better known a thing may be, so much the more eligible is it as the subject of a descriptive sketch.

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side—entrance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion which could be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously preserved in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor; it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by; and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing—and felt it no venture at all—to speak here above his breath.

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone; and the whole of it—the lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed arches—appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron, or otherwise carefully protected; and being thus watched over,—whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national interest and pride,—it may reasonably be expected to survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the sombre pavement afar off, falling through the grand western entrance, the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were painted glass windows, of which the uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of such men as their respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals or admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs; but it was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it; and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most solemn conceptions.

From these distant wanderings, (it was my first visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance,) my eyes came back and began to investigate what was immediately about me in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the full-length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle,—the historic Duke of Charles I.'s time, and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and all the sisters virtuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcom, the new marble as white as snow, held the next place; and near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it was by no merit of his own, (though he took care to assume it as such,) but by the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of the latter, sat on the other side of the transept; and on the pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead of the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly; but I had supposed that Portia (when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be weighed) was the only judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were in the same distinguished company; and John Kemble, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long endurance of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb; though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested with more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form) feels it an imperious law to remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible without sacrificing every trace of resemblance. The absurd effect of the contrary course is very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed to behold, seated just across the aisle.

This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose; while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might fancy, that, at come ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble,—not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the agelong duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities; for, if the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the English face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustrious the individual.

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half-jocose criticism in describing my first visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed about more reverentially, from my childhood upward, than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordinary church, you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the place; but you need leave no honest and decorous portion of your human nature outside of these benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster Abbey, because "they do bury fools there!" Nevertheless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the interior walls, have come there by as natural a process as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the external edifice; for they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are content, at last, to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if, indeed, they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less, or whether Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual epitaph-maker ever meant to write.

When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles; for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, "O rare Ben Jonson!" and remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright,—not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it!—such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet!—apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country-churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their literary men.

Another day—in truth, many other days—I sought out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to this building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stonework of the walls. Great poets, too; for Ben Jonson is right behind the door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot. Enjoying a humble intimacy—and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude!—with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delightful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me; and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together in fit companionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other miserable impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived. I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous dead people. A poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his fellow-mortals, after his bones are in the dust,—and he not ghostly, but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring for? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no substance; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And therefore—though he cunningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of state, or kingly purple—it is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or have,—a name!

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been betrayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me; but it represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets' Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but more for Shakspeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the general passport to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, indeed, (and it is too characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned) one or two gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men of rank; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he was connected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Secretary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date.

Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of space left, although room has lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full-length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of the gentle artist-breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity men of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were treated in their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance at nobles and official personages, however worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's regard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness,—this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to themselves) in the vast minster, the walls of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may not be worth while to quarrel with the world on this account; for, to confess the very truth, their own little nook contains more than one poet whose memory is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbuing the senseless stone with a spiritual immortality,—men of whom you do not ask, "Where is he?" but "Why is he here?" I estimate that all the literary people who really make an essential part of one's inner life, including the period since English literature first existed, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and quaff their draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory over the humblest of their companions. And as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensibilities of their craft, and have found out the little value, (probably not amounting to sixpence in immortal currency) of the posthumous renown which they once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise.

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an undying song would fain be conscious of its endless reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of great memories as Westminster Abbey. There are some men, at all events,—true and tender poets, moreover, and fully deserving of the honor,—whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets' Corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily supply; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved; though there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He deserves it, however, if not for his verse, (the value of which I do not estimate, never having been able to read it,) yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with Leigh Hunt.

He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village-street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study, or parlor, or both,—a very forlorn room, with poor paper-hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well; but he had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the better robe.

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression, nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since; and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament, —youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that the nicest observer could not detect the application of it.

His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative, of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare yourself the trouble of utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturbing its quietude; and as he talked, he kept folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate experience in either direction. There was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy, or port-wine, entered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life, he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was merely a projection of his fancy-world into the actual, and that he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefullest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his declining age.

It was not, I think, from his American blood that Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peaceful inclinations; at least, I do not see how we can reasonably claim the former quality as a national characteristic, though the latter might have been fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind of excellence that distinguished him—his fineness, subtilty, and grace—was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended to develop in the happier examples of American genius, and which (though I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future intellectual advancement may make general among us. His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his manners; for we are the best-as well as the worst-mannered people in the world.

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response to all that we ventured to express about his writings, (and, for my part, I went quite to the extent of my conscience, which was a long way, and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily were with me,) his face shone, and he manifested great delight, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness for which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such appreciation gave him; it always took him by surprise, he remarked, for—perhaps because he cleaned his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for himself—he never had been conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usually the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to his face; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with such gracious satisfaction, (feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. Women are the fit ministers at such a shrine.

He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, grace-fill, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results from power; for beauty, like woman, its human representative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than in his earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future life; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk,—all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegancies about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone.

At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met him for the last time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, partly embraced and supported by, if I mistake not, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Leigh Hunt.

* * * * *

THE FERN FORESTS OF THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD.

Draw two lines on your map, the upper one running from the mouth of the St. Lawrence westward nearly to St. Paul on the Mississippi, and the lower one from the neighborhood of St. John's in Newfoundland running southwesterly about to the point where the Wisconsin joins the Mississippi, but jutting down to form an extensive peninsula comprising part of the States of Indiana and Illinois, and you include between them all of the United States which existed at the close of the Devonian period. The upper line rests against the granite hills dividing the Silurian and Devonian deposits of the British Possessions to the north from those of the United States to the south, Canada itself consisting, in great part, of the granite ridge.

How far the early deposits extended to the north of the Laurentian Hills, as well as the outline of that portion of the continent in those times, remains still very problematical; but the investigations thus far undertaken in those regions would lead to the supposition that the same granite upheaval which raised Canada stretched northward in a broad, low ridge of land, widening in its upper part and extending to the neighborhood of Bathurst Inlet and King William's Island, while on either side of it to the east and west the Silurian and Devonian deposits extended far toward the present outlines of the continent.

Indeed, our geological surveys, as well as the information otherwise obtained concerning the primitive condition of North America and the gradual accessions it has received in more recent periods, point to a very early circumscription of the area which, in the course of time, was to become the continent we now inhabit, with its modern features.[A]

[Footnote A: It would be impossible to encumber the pages of the Atlantic Monthly with references to all the authorities on which such geological results rest. They are drawn from the various State Surveys, including that of the mineral lands of Lake Superior, and other more general works on American geology.]

Not only from the geology of America, but from that of Europe also, it would seem that the position of the continents was sketched out very early in the progressive development of the physical constitution of our earth. It is true that in the present state of our knowledge such wide generalizations must be taken with caution, and held in abeyance to the additional facts which future investigations may develop. But thus far the results certainly do not sustain the theories which have lately found favor among geologists, of entire changes in the relative distribution of land and sea and in the connection of continents with one another; on the contrary, it would appear, that, in accordance with the laws of all organic progress, arising from a fixed starting-point and proceeding through regular changes toward a well-defined end, the continents have grown steadily and consistently from the beginning, through successive accessions in a definite direction, to their present form and Organic correlations. If, indeed, there is any meaning in the remarkably symmetrical combinations of the double twin continents in the Eastern Hemisphere, so closely soldered in their northern half, as contrasted with the single pair in the Western Hemisphere, isolated in their position, but so strikingly similar in their Outlines, they must be the result of a progressive and predetermined growth already hinted at in the relative position and gradual increase of the first lands raised above the level of the ocean.

However this may be, there can be no doubt that we now know with tolerable accuracy the limits of the land raised above the water at that period in the present United States. Let us see, then, what we inclose between oar two lines. We have Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, the greater part of New England, the whole of New York, a narrow strip along the north of Ohio, a great part of Indiana and Illinois, and nearly the whole of Michigan and Wisconsin.

Within this region lie all the Great Lakes. The origin of these large troughs, holding such immense sheets of fresh water, remains still the subject of discussion and investigation among geologists. It has been supposed that in the primitive configuration of the globe, when the formation of those depressions at the poles in which the Arctic seas are accumulated gave rise to a corresponding protrusion at the equator, the curve thus produced throughout the North Temperate Zone may have forced up the Canada granite, and have caused, at the same time, those rents in the earth's surface now filled by the Canada lakes; and this view is sustained by the fact that there is a belt of lakes, among which, however, the Canada lakes are far the largest, all around the world in that latitude. The geological phenomena connected with all these lakes have not, however, been investigated with sufficient accuracy and detail, nor has there been any comparison of them extensive and comprehensive enough to justify the adoption of any theory respecting their origin. In an excursion to Lake Superior, some years since, I satisfied myself that the position and outline of that particular lake had their immediate cause in several distinct systems of dikes which intersect its northern shore, and have probably cut up the whole tract of rock over the space now filled by that wonderful sheet of fresh water in such a way as to destroy its continuity, to produce depressions, and gradually create the excavation which now forms the basin of the lake. How far the same causes have been effectual in producing the other large lakes I am unable to say, never having had the opportunity of studying their formation with the same care.

The existence of the numerous smaller lakes running north and south in the State of New York, as the Canandaigua, Seneca, Cayuga, etc., is more easily accounted for. Slow and gradual as was the process by which all that region was lifted above the ocean, it was, nevertheless, accompanied by powerful dislocations of the stratified deposits, as we shall see when we examine them with reference to the local phenomena connected with them. To these dislocations of the strata we owe the transverse cracks across the central part of New York, which needed only the addition of the fresh water poured into them by the rains to transform them into lakes.

I shall not attempt any account of the differences between the animals of the Devonian period and those of the Silurian period, because they consist of structural details difficult to present in a popular form and uninteresting to all but the professional naturalist. Suffice it to say, that, though the organic world had the same general character in these two closely allied periods, yet its representatives in each were specifically distinct, and their differences, however slight, are as constant and as definitely marked as those between more widely separated creations.

At the close of the Devonian period, several upheavals occurred of great significance for the future history of America. One in Ohio raised the elevated ground on which Cincinnati now stands; another hill lifted its granite crest in Missouri, raising with it an extensive tract of Silurian and Devonian deposits; while a smaller one, which does not seem, however, to have disturbed the beds about it so powerfully, broke through in Arkansas. At the same time, elevations took place toward the East,—the first links, few and detached, in the great Alleghany chain which now raises its rocky wall from New England to Alabama.

In the Ohio hill, the granite did not break through, though the force of the upheaval was such as to rend asunder the Devonian deposits, for we find them lying torn and broken about the base of the hill; while the Silurian beds, which should underlie them in their natural position, form its centre and summit. This accounts for the great profusion of Silurian organic remains in that neighborhood. Indeed, there is no locality which forces upon the observer more strongly the conviction of the profusion and richness of the early creation; for one may actually collect the remains of Silurian Shells and Crustacea by cart-loads around the city of Cincinnati. A naturalist would find it difficult to gather along any modern sea-shore, even on tropical coasts, where marine life is more abundant than elsewhere, so rich a harvest, in the same time, as he will bring home from an hour's ramble in the environs of that city.

These elevations naturally gave rise to depressions between themselves and the land on either side of them, and caused also so many counter-slopes dipping toward the uniform southern slope already formed at the north. Thus between the several new upheavals, as well as between them all and the land to the north of them, wide basins or troughs were formed, inclosed on the south, west, and east by low hills, (for these more recent eruptions were, like all the early upheavals, insignificant in height,) and bounded on the north by the more ancient shores of the preceding ages.

These were the inland seas of the Carboniferous period. Here, again, we must infer the successive stages of a history which we can read only in its results. Shut out from the ocean, these shallow sea-basins were gradually changed by the rains to fresh-water lakes; the lakes, in their turn, underwent a transformation, becoming filled, in the course of centuries, with the materials worn away from their shores, with the debris of the animals which lived and died in their waters, as well as with the decaying matter from aquatic plants, till at last they were changed to spreading marshes, and on these marshes arose the gigantic fern-vegetation of which the first forests chiefly consisted. Such are the separate chapters in the history of the coal-basins of Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New England, and Nova Scotia. First inland seas, then fresh-water lakes, then spreading marshes, then gigantic forests, and lastly vast storehouses of coal for the human race.

Although coal-beds are by no means peculiar to the Carboniferous period, since such deposits must be formed wherever the decay of vegetation is going on extensively, yet it would seem that coal-making was the great work in that age of the world's physical history. The atmospheric conditions, so far as we can understand them, were then especially favorable to this result. Though the existence of such an extensive terrestrial vegetation shows conclusively that an atmosphere must have been already established, with all the attendant phenomena of light, heat, air, moisture, etc., yet it is probable that this atmosphere differed from ours in being very largely charged with carbonic acid.

We should infer this from the nature of the animals characteristic of the period; for, though land-animals were introduced, and the organic world was no longer exclusively marine, there were as yet none of the higher beings in whom respiration is an active process. In all warm-blooded animals the breathing is quick, requiring a large proportion of oxygen in the surrounding air, and indicating by its rapidity the animation of the whole system; while the slow-breathing, cold-blooded animals can live in an air that is heavily loaded with carbon. It is well known, however, that, though carbon is so deadly to higher animal life, plants require it in great quantities; and it would seem that one of the chief offices of the early forests was to purify the atmosphere of its undue proportion of carbonic acid, by absorbing the carbon into their own substance, and eventually depositing it as coal in the soil.

Another very important agent in the process of purifying the atmosphere, and adapting it to the maintenance of a higher organic life, is found in the deposits of lime. My readers will excuse me, if I introduce here a very elementary chemical fact to explain this statement. Limestone is carbonate of calcium. Calcium is a metal, fusible as such, and, forming a part of the melted masses within the earth, it was thrown out with the eruptions of Plutonic rocks. Brought to the air, it would appropriate a certain amount of oxygen, and by that process would become oxide of calcium, in which condition it combines very readily with carbonic acid. Thus it becomes carbonate of lime; and all lime deposits played an important part in establishing the atmospheric proportions essential to the existence of the warm-blooded animals.

Such facts remind us how far more comprehensive the results of science will become when the different branches of scientific investigation are pursued in connection with each other. When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,—when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,—when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,—then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now that they are separately studied.

It may be asked, how any clue can be found to phenomena so evanescent as those of clouds and moisture. But do we not trace in the old deposits the rainstorms of past times? The heavy drops of a passing shower, the thick, crowded tread of a splashing rain, or the small pinpricks of a close and fine one,—all the story, in short, of the rising vapors, the gathering clouds, the storms and showers of ancient days, we find recorded for us in the fossil rain-drops; and when we add to this the possibility of analyzing the chemical elements which have been absorbed into the soil, but which once made part of the atmosphere, it is not too much to hope that we shall learn something hereafter of the meteorology even of the earliest geological ages.

The peculiar character of the vegetable tissue in the trees of the Carboniferous period, containing, as it did, a large supply of resin drawn from the surrounding elements, confirms the view of the atmospheric conditions above stated; and this fact, as well as the damp, soggy soil in which the first forests must have grown, accounts for the formation of coal in greater quantity and more combustible in quality than is found in the more recent deposits. But stately as were those fern forests, where plants which creep low at our feet to-day, or are known to us chiefly as underbrush, or as rushes and grasses in swampy grounds, grew to the height of lofty trees, yet the vegetation was of an inferior kind.

There has been a gradation in time for the vegetable as well as the animal world. With the marine population of the more ancient geological ages we find nothing but sea-weeds,—of great variety, it is true, and, as it would seem, from some remains of the marine Cryptogams in early times, of immense size, as compared with modern sea-weeds. But in the Carboniferous period, the plants, though still requiring a soaked and marshy soil, were aerial or atmospheric plants: they were covered with leaves; they breathed; their fructification was like that which now characterizes the ferns, the club-mosses, and the so-called "horse-tail plants," (Equisetaceae,) those grasses of low, damp grounds remarkable for the strongly marked articulations of the stem.

These were the lords of the forests all over the world in the Carboniferous period. Wherever the Carboniferous deposits have been traced, in the United States, in Canada, in England, France, Belgium, Germany, in New Holland, at the Cape of Good Hope, and in South America, the general aspect of the vegetation has been found to be the same, though characterized in the different localities by specific differences of the same nature as those by which the various floras are distinguished now in different parts of the same zone. For instance, the Temperate Zone throughout the world is characterized by certain families of trees: by Oaks, Maples, Beeches, Birches, Pines, etc.; but the Oaks, Maples, Beeches, Birches, and the like, of the American flora in that latitude differ in species from the corresponding European flora. So in the Carboniferous period, when more uniform climatic conditions prevailed throughout the world, the character of the vegetation showed a general unity of structure everywhere; but it was nevertheless broken up into distinct botanical provinces by specific differences of the same kind as those which now give such diversity of appearance to the vegetation of the Temperate Zone in Europe as compared with that of America, or to the forests of South America as compared with those of Africa.

There can be no doubt as to the true nature of the Carboniferous forests; for the structural character of the trees is as strongly marked in their fossil remains as in any living plants of the same character. We distinguish the Ferns not only by the peculiar form of their leaves, often perfectly preserved, but also by the fructification on the lower surface of the leaves, and by the distinct marks made on the stem at their point of juncture with it. The leaf of the Fern, when falling, leaves a scar on the stem varying in shape and size according to the kind of Fern, so that the botanist readily distinguishes any particular species of Fern by this means,—a birth-mark, as it were, by which he detects the parentage of the individual. Another indication, equally significant, is found in the tubular structure of the wood in Ferns. On a vertical section of any well-preserved Fern-trunk from the old forests the little tubes may be seen very distinctly running up its length; or, if it be cut through transversely, they may be traced by the little pores like dots on the surface. Trees of this description are found in the Carboniferous marshes, standing erect and perfectly preserved, with trunks a foot and a half in diameter, rising to a height of many feet. Plants so strongly bituminous as the Ferns, when they equalled in size many of our present forest-trees, naturally made coal deposits of the most combustible quality. It is true that we find the anthracite coal of the same period with comparatively little bituminous matter; but this is where the bitumen has been destroyed by the action of the internal heat of the earth.

Next to the Ferns, the Club-Mosses (Lycopodiacae) seem to have contributed most largely to the marsh-forests. They were characterized, then, as now, by the small size of the leaves growing close against the stem, so that the stem itself, though covered with leaves, looks almost naked, like the stem of the Cactus. Beside these, there are the tree-like Equiseta, in which we find the articulations on the trunk corresponding exactly to those now so characteristic of those marsh-grasses which are the modern representatives of this family of plants, with cone-like fructifications on the summit of the stem.

I would merely touch here upon a subject which does not belong to my own branch of Natural History, but is of the greatest interest in botanical research, namely, the gradation of plants in the geological ages, and the combination of characters in some of the earlier vegetable forms, corresponding to that already noticed in the ancient animal types. For instance, in the Carboniferous period we have only Cryptogams, Ferns, Lycopodiacae, and Equisetaceae. In the middle geological ages, Conifers are introduced, the first flowering plant known on earth, but in which the flower is very imperfect as compared with those of the higher groups. The Coniferae were chiefly represented in the middle periods by the Cycadae, that peculiar group of Coniferae, resembling Pines in their structure, but recalling the Ferns by their external appearance. The stem is round and short, its surface being covered with scars similar to those of the Ferns; while on the summit are ten or more leaves, fan-like and spreading when their growth is complete, but rolled up at first, like Fern-leaves before they expand. Their fruit resembles somewhat the Pine-Apple.

The mode of growth of the Coniferae recalls a feature of the Equisetaceae also, in the tufts of little leaves which appear in whorls at regular intervals along the length of the stem in proportion as it elongates, reminding one of the articulations on the stem of the Equisetaceae. The first cone also appears on the summit of the stem, like the terminal cone in the Equisetaceae and the Club-Mosses. Thus in certain types of the vegetable, as well as the animal creation of earlier times, there was a continuation of features, afterwards divided and presented in separate groups. In the present times, no one of these families of plants overlaps the others, but each has a distinct individual character of its own.

At the close of the middle geological ages and the opening of the Tertiary periods, the Monocotyledons become abundant, the first plants with flower and inclosed seed, though with no true floral envelope: but not until the two last epochs of the Tertiary age do we find in any number the Dicotyledonous plants, in which flower and fruit rise to their highest perfection. Thus there has been a procession of plants from their earliest introduction to the present day, corresponding to their botanical rank as they now exist, so that the series of gradation in the Vegetable Kingdom, as well as the Animal Kingdom, is the same, whether founded upon succession in time or upon comparative structural rank.

Some attempt has been made to reproduce under an artistic form the aspect of the world in the different geological ages, and to present in single connected pictures the animal and vegetable world of each period. Professor F. Unger, of Vienna, has prepared a collection of fourteen such sketches, entitled, "Tableaux Physionomiques de la Vegetation des Diverses Periodes du Monde Primitif."

First, we have the Devonian shores, with spreading fields of sea-weed and numbers of the club-shaped Algae of gigantic size. He has ventured, also, to represent a few trees, with scanty foliage; but I believe their existence at so early a period to be very problematical.

Next comes the Carboniferous forest, with still pools of water lying between the Fern-trees, which, much as they affect damp, swampy grounds, seem scarcely able to find foothold on the dripping earth. Their trunks, as well as those of the Club-Moss trees which make the foreground of the picture, stand up free from any branches for many feet above the ground, giving one a glimpse between them into the dim recesses of this quiet, watery wood, where the silence was unbroken by the song of birds or the hum of insects. We shall find, it is true, when we give a glance at the animals of this time, that certain insects made their appearance with the first terrestrial vegetation; but they were few in number and of a peculiar kind, such as thrive now in low, wet lands.

Upon this follow a number of sketches introducing us to the middle periods, where the land is higher and more extensive, covered chiefly with Pine forests, beneath which grows a thick carpet of underbrush, consisting mostly of Grasses, Rushes, and Ferns. Here and there one of the gigantic reptiles of the time may be seen sunning himself on the shore. One of these sketches shows us such a creature hungrily inspecting a pool where Crinoids, with their long stems, large, closely-coiled Chambered Shells, and Brachiopods, the Oysters and Clams of those days, offer him a tempting repast. Here and there a Pterodactyl, the curious winged reptile of the later middle periods, stretches its long neck from the water, and birds also begin to make their appearance.

After these come the Tertiary periods: the Eocene first, where the landscape is already broken up by hills and mountains, clothed with a varied vegetation of comparatively modern character. Lily-pads are floating on the stream which makes the central part of the picture; large herds of the Palaeotherium, the ancient Pachyderm, reconstructed with such accuracy by Cuvier, are feeding along its banks; and a tall bird of the Heron or Pelican kind stands watching by the water's edge. In the Miocene the vegetation looks still more familiar, though the Elephants roaming about in regions of the Temperate Zone, and the huge Salamanders crawling out of the water, remind us that we are still far removed from present times. Lastly, we have the ice period, with the glaciers coming down to the borders of a river where large troops of Buffalo are drinking, while on the shore some Bears are feasting on the remains of a huge carcass.

It is, however, with the Carboniferous age that we have to do at present, and I will not anticipate the coming chapters of my story by dwelling now on the aspect of the later periods. To return, then, to the period of the coal, it would seem that extensive freshets frequently overflowed the marshes, and that even after many successive forests had sprung up and decayed upon their soil, they were still subject to submergence by heavy floods. These freshets, at certain intervals, are not difficult to understand, when we remember, that, beside the occasional influx of violent rains, the earth was constantly undergoing changes of level, and that a subsidence or upheaval in the neighborhood would disturb the equilibrium of the waters, causing them to overflow and pour over the surface of the country, thus inundating the marshes anew.

That such was the case we can hardly doubt, after the facts revealed by recent investigations of the Carboniferous deposits. In some of the deeper coal-beds there is a regular alternation between layers of coal and layers of sand or clay; in certain localities, as many as ten, twelve, and even fifteen coal-beds have been found alternating with as many deposits of clay or mud or sand; and in some instances, where the trunks of the trees are hollow and have been left standing erect, they are filled to the brim, or to the height of the next layer of deposits, with the materials that have been swept over them. Upon this set of deposits comes a new bed of coal with the remains of a new forest, and. above this again a layer of materials left by a second freshet, and so on through a number of alternate strata. It is evident from these facts that there have been a succession of forests, one above another, but that in the intervals of their growth great floods have poured over the marshes, bringing with them all kinds of loose materials, such as sand, pebbles, clay, mud, lime, etc., which, as the freshets subsided, settled down over the coal, filling not only the spaces between such trees as remained standing, but even the hollow trunks of the trees themselves.

Let us give a glance now at the animals which inhabited the waters of this period. In the Radiates we shall not find great changes; the three classes are continued, though with new representatives, and the Polyp Corals are increasing, while the Acalephian Corals, the Kugosa and Tabulata, are diminishing. The Crinoids were still the most prominent representatives of the class of Echinoderms, though some resembling the Ophiurans and Echinoids (Sea-Urchins) began to make their appearance. The adjoining wood-cut represents a characteristic Crinoid of the Carboniferous age.



Among the Mollusks, Brachiopods are still prominent, one new genus among them, the Productus, being very remarkable on account of the manner in which one valve rises above the other. The wood-cut below represents such a shell, looked at from the side of the flat valve, showing the straight cut of the line of juncture between the valves and the rising curve of the opposite one, which looks like a hooked beak when seen in profile.



Other species of Bivalves were also introduced, approaching more nearly our Clams and Oysters, or, as they are called in scientific nomenclature, the Lamellibranchiates. They differ from the Brachiopods chiefly in the higher character of their breathing-apparatus; for they have free gills, instead of the net-work of vessels on the lining skin which serves as the organ of respiration in the Brachiopods. We shall always find, that, in proportion as the functions are distinct, and, as it were, individualized by having special organs appropriated to them, animals rise in the scale of structure. The next class of Mollusks, the Gasteropods, or Univalves, with spiral shells, were numerous, but, from their brittle character, are seldom found in a good state of preservation.

The Chambered Shells, or the Cephalopods, represented chiefly in the earlier periods by the straight Orthoceratites described in a previous article, are now curled in a close coil, and the internal structure of their chambers has become more complicated. The subjoined wood-cut represents a characteristic Chambered Shell of the Carboniferous age. Goniatites is the scientific name of these later forms. If we had looked for them in the Devonian period, we should have found many with looser coils than these, and some only slightly curved in the shape of a horn. These, as well as the perfectly straight forms, still exist in the coal period, but the Goniatites with close whorls are the more numerous and more characteristic.



The Articulates have gained their missing class since the close of the Devonian period, for Insects have come in, and that division of the Animal Kingdom is therefore complete, and represented by three classes, as it is at present. Of the Worms little can be said; their traces are found as before, but they are very imperfectly preserved. There are still Trilobites, but they are very few in number, and other groups of Crustacea have been added.

One of the most prominent of these new types bears a striking resemblance to the Horse-Shoe Crab of present times.



I here present one of our common Horse-Shoe Crabs above one of these old-world Crustaceans, and it will be seen, that, while the latter preserves some of the Trilobitic characters, such as the marked articulations on the posterior part of the body and their division into three lobes, yet in the prominence of its anterior shield, its more elongated form, and tapering extremity, it resembles its modern representative. In some of them, however, there is no such sharp point as is here figured, and the body terminates bluntly. There were a large number of these Entomostraca in the Carboniferous period, a group which is chiefly represented among living Crustacea by an exceedingly minute kind of Shrimp; but in those days they were of the size of our Crabs and Lobsters, or even larger, and the Horse-Shoe Crab still maintains their claim to a place among the larger and more conspicuous members of the class.

The Insects were few, and, as I have said above, of a kind which seeks a moist atmosphere, or whose larvae live altogether in water. They are not usually well preserved, as will be seen from the broken character of the one here represented, although the wood-cut is made from a better specimen than is often found. We have, however, remains enough to establish unquestionably the fact of their existence in the Carboniferous period, and to show us that the type of Articulates was already represented by all its classes.



Not so with the Vertebrates. Fishes abound, but their class still consists, as before, of the Ganoids, those fishes of the earlier periods built on the Gar-Pike and Sturgeon pattern, and the Selachians, represented now by Sharks and Skates. In the Carboniferous period we begin to find perfectly preserved specimens of the Ganoids, and the adjoining wood-cut represents such a one. Of the old type of Selachians we have again one lingering representative in our own times to give us the clue to its ancestors,—as the Gar-Pike explains the old Ganoids, and the Chambered Nautilus helps us to understand the Chambered Shells of past times. The so-called Port-Jackson Shark has features which were very characteristic of the Carboniferous Sharks and are lost in the modern ones, so that it affords us a sort of link, as it were, and a measure of comparison, between those now living and the more ancient forms. It is an interesting fact that this only living representative of the Carboniferous Shark should be found in New Holland, because it is there, in that isolated continent, left apart, as it would seem, for a special purpose, that we find reproduced for us most fully the character of the Animal Kingdom in earlier creations.



The first Mammalia in the world were pouched animals, having that extraordinary attachment to the mother after birth which characterizes the Kangaroo. In New Holland almost all the Mammalia are pouched, and have also the imperfect organization of the brain, as compared with the other Mammalia, which accompanies that peculiar structural feature; and although the American Opossum makes an exception to the rule, it is nevertheless true that this type of the Animal Kingdom is now confined almost exclusively to New Holland. Whether this living picture of old creations in modern garb was meant to be educational for man or not, it is at least well that we should take advantage of it in learning all it has to teach us of the relations between the organic world of past and present times.

There were a great variety of the Selachians in the Carboniferous period. The wood-cuts below represent a tooth and a spine from one of the most characteristic groups, but I have not thought it worth while to enumerate or to figure others here, for there are no perfect specimens, and their structural differences consist chiefly in the various form and appearance of the teeth, scales, and spines, and would be uninteresting to most of my readers. I would refer the more scientific ones, who may care to know something of these details, to my investigations on Fossil Fishes, published many years since under the title of "Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles."



Although the Vertebrate division of the Animal Kingdom still waited for its higher classes, yet it had received one important addition since the Silurian and Devonian periods. The Carboniferous marshes were not without their reptilian inhabitants; but they were Reptiles of the lowest class, the so-called Amphibians, those which are hatched from the egg in an immature condition, undergoing metamorphosis after birth. They have no hard scales, and lay a large number of eggs. I am unable to present any figure of one of these ancient Reptiles, as they are found in so imperfect a state of preservation that no plates have been made from them. I would add in connection with this subject that I believe a large number of animals found in the Carboniferous deposits, and referred to the class of Reptiles, to be Fishes allied to Saurians.

Before leaving the Carboniferous period, let us see what territory the United States has conquered from the Ocean during that time. All its central portion, from Canada to Alabama, and from Western Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas to Eastern Virginia, was raised above the water. But as yet the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains did not exist; a great gulf ran up to the mouth of the Ohio, for the Mississippi had not yet accumulated the soil for the fertile valley through which it was to take its southern course; the Coral-Builders had still their work to do in constructing the peninsula of Florida; and, indeed, all the borders of the continent of North America, as well as a large part of its Western territory, were still to be added. But although its central portion held its ground and was never submerged again, yet the continent was slowly subsiding during the middle geological periods, so that, instead of enlarging gradually by the increase of deposits, its limits remained much the same.

This accounts for the very scanty traces to be found in America of the secondary deposits; for the Permian, Triassic, and Jurassic beds, instead of being raised to form successive shores, along which their deposits could be accumulated in regular sequence, as had been the case with the Azoic, Silurian, and Devonian deposits in the northern part of the United States, were constantly sinking, so that the Triassic settled above the Permian, the Jurassic above the Triassic, and so on, each set of strata thus covering over and concealing the preceding one. Though we find the stratified rocks of these periods cropping out here and there, where some violent disturbance or the abrading action of water has torn asunder or worn away the overlying strata, yet we never find them consecutively over any extensive region; and it is not till the Cretaceous and earlier Tertiary periods that we find again a regular succession of deposits around the shores of the continent, marking its present outlines. It is, then, in Europe, where the sequence of their beds is most complete, that we must seek to decipher the history of the middle geological ages; and therefore, when I meet my readers again, it will be in the Old World of civilization, though more recent in its physical features than the one we leave.

* * * * *

TO E.W.

I know not, Time and Space so intervene, Whether, still waiting with a trust serene, Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen; But, here or there, a pleasant thought of thee, Like an old friend, all day has been with me. The shy, still boy, for whom thy kindly hand Smoothed his hard pathway to the wonder-land Of thought and fancy, in gray manhood yet Keeps green the memory of his early debt. To-day, when truth and falsehood speak their words Through hot-lipped cannon and the teeth of swords, Listening with quickened heart and ear intent To each sharp clause of that stern argument, I still can hear at times a softer note Of the old pastoral music round me float, While through the hot gleam of our civil strife Looms the green mirage of a simpler life. As, at his alien post, the sentinel Drops the old bucket in the homestead well, And hears old voices in the winds that toss Above his head the live-oak's beard of moss, So, in our trial-time, and under skies Shadowed by swords like Islam's paradise, I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray To milder scenes and youth's Arcadian day; And howsoe'er the pencil dipped in dreams Shades the brown woods or tints the sunset streams, The country doctor in the foreground seems, Whose ancient sulky down the village lanes Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains. I could not paint the scenery of my song, Mindless of one who looked thereon so long; Who, night and day, on duty's lonely round, Made friends o' th' woods and rocks, and knew the sound Of each small brook, and what the hill-side trees Said to the winds that touched their leafy keys; Who saw so keenly and so well could paint The village-folk, with all their humors quaint,— The parson ambling on his wall-eyed roan, Grave and erect, with white hair backward blown,— The tough old boatman, half amphibious grown,— The muttering witch-wife of the gossip's tale, And the loud straggler levying his black mail,— Old customs, habits, superstitions, fears, All that lies buried under fifty years. To thee, as is most fit, I bring my lay, And, grateful, own the debt I cannot pay.

* * * * *

THE COUNTESS.

Over the wooded northern ridge, Between its houses brown, To the dark tunnel of the bridge The street comes straggling down.

You catch a glimpse through birch and pine Of gable, roof, and porch, The tavern with its swinging sign, The sharp horn of the church.

The river's steel-blue crescent curves To meet, in ebb and flow, The single broken wharf that serves For sloop and gundelow.

With salt sea-scents along its shores The heavy hay-boats crawl, The long antennae of their oars In lazy rise and fall.

Along the gray abutment's wall The idle shad-net dries; The toll-man in his cobbler's stall Sits smoking with closed eyes.

You hear the pier's low undertone Of waves that chafe and gnaw; You start,—a skipper's horn is blown To raise the creaking draw.

At times a blacksmith's anvil sounds With slow and sluggard beat, Or stage-coach on its dusty rounds Wakes up the staring street.

A place for idle eyes and ears, A cobwebbed nook of dreams; Left by the stream whose waves are years The stranded village seems.

And there, like other moss and rust, The native dweller clings, And keeps, in uninquiring trust, The old, dull round of things.

The fisher drops his patient lines, The farmer sows his grain, Content to hear the murmuring pines Instead of railroad-train.

Go where, along the tangled steep That slopes against the west, The hamlet's buried idlers sleep In still profounder rest.

Throw back the locust's flowery plume, The birch's pale-green scarf, And break the web of brier and bloom From name and epitaph.

A simple muster-roll of death, Of pomp and romance shorn, The dry, old names that common breath Has cheapened and outworn.

Yet pause by one low mound and part The wild vines o'er it laced, And read the words by rustic art Upon its headstone traced.

Haply yon white-haired villager Of fourscore years can say What means the noble name of her Who sleeps with common clay.

An exile from the Gascon land Found refuge here and rest, And loved, of all the village band, Its fairest and its best.

He knelt with her on Sabbath morns, He worshipped through her eyes, And on the pride that doubts and scorns Stole in her faith's surprise.

Her simple daily life he saw By homeliest duties tried, In all things by an untaught law Of fitness justified.

For her his rank aside he laid; He took the hue and tone Of lowly life and toil, and made Her simple ways his own.

Yet still, in gay and careless ease, To harvest-field or dance He brought the gentle courtesies, The nameless grace of France.

And she who taught him love not less From him she loved in turn Caught in her sweet unconsciousness What love is quick to learn.

Each grew to each in pleased accord, Nor knew the gazing town If she looked upward to her lord Or he to her looked down.

How sweet, when summer's day was o'er, His violin's mirth and wail, The walk on pleasant Newbury's shore, The river's moonlit sail!

Ah! life is brief, though love be long The altar and the bier, The burial hymn and bridal song, Were both in one short year!

Her rest is quiet on the hill Beneath the locust's bloom; Far off her lover sleeps as still Within his scutcheoned tomb.

The Gascon lord, the village maid In death still clasp their hands; The love that levels rank and grade Unites their severed lands.

What matter whose the hill-side grave, Or whose the blazoned stone? Forever to her western wave Shall whisper blue Garonne!

O Love!—so hallowing every soil That gives thy sweet flower room, Wherever, nursed by ease or toil, The human heart takes bloom!—

Plant of lost Eden, from the sod Of sinful earth unriven, White blossom of the trees of God Dropped down to us from heaven!—

This tangled waste of mound and stone Is holy for thy sake; A sweetness which is all thy own Breathes out from fern and brake.

And while ancestral pride shall twine The Gascon's tomb with flowers, Fall sweetly here, O song of mine, With summer's bloom and showers!

And let the lines that severed seem Unite again in thee, As western wave and Gallic stream Are mingled in one sea!

* * * * *

GALA-DAYS.

I.

Once there was a great noise in our house,—a thumping and battering and grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from the garret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said, "Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?" he would have asked me what trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one be better? and couldn't I wait till after dinner?—and so the trunk would probably have had a three-days' journey from garret to basement. Now I am strong in the wrists and weak in the temper; therefore I used the one and spared the other, and got the trunk down-stairs myself. Halicarnassus heard the uproar. He must have been deaf not to hear it; for the old ark banged and bounced, and scraped the paint off the stairs, and pitched head-foremost into the wall, and gouged out the plastering, and dinted the mop-board, and was the most stupid, awkward, uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got hold of in my life.

By the time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber, Halicarnassus loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside of my fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rasped off three knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunk had crushed it against a sharp edge of the door-way.

"Now, then?" said Halicarnassus interrogatively.

"To be sure," I replied affirmatively.

He said no more, but went and looked up the garret-stairs. They bore traces of a severe encounter, that must be confessed.

"Do you want me to give you a bit of advice?" he asked.

"No!" I answered promptly.

"Well, then, here it is. The next time you design to bring a trunk downstairs, you would better cut away the underpinning, and knock out the beams, and let the garret down into the cellar. It will make less uproar, and not take so much to repair damages."

He intended to be severe. His words passed by me as the idle wind. I perched on my trunk, took a pasteboard box-cover and fanned myself. I was very warm. Halicarnassus sat down on the lowest stair and remained silent several minutes, expecting a meek explanation, but, not getting it, swallowed a bountiful piece of what is called in homely talk "humble-pie," and said,—

"I should like to know what's in the wind now."

I make it a principle always to resent an insult and to welcome repentance with equal alacrity. If people thrust out their horns at me wantonly, they very soon run against a stone wall; but the moment they show signs of contrition, I soften. It is the best way. Don't insist that people shall grovel at your feet before you accept their apology. That is not magnanimous. Let mercy temper justice. It is a hard thing at best for human nature to go down into the Valley of Humiliation; and although, when circumstances arise which make it the only fit place for a person, I insist upon his going, still, no sooner does he actually begin the descent than my sense of justice is appeased, my natural sweetness of disposition resumes sway, and I trip along by his side chatting as gayly as if I did not perceive it was the Valley of Humiliation at all, but fancied it the Delectable Mountains. So, upon the first symptoms of placability, I answered cordially,—

"Halicarnassus, it has been the ambition of my life to write a book of travels. But to write a book of travels, one must first have travelled."

"Not at all," he responded. "With an atlas and an encyclopedia one can travel around the world in his arm-chair."

"But one cannot have personal adventures," I said. "You can, indeed, sit in your arm-chair and describe the crater of Vesuvius; but you cannot tumble into the crater of Vesuvius from your arm-chair."

"I have never heard that it was necessary to tumble in, in order to have a good view of the mountain."

"But it is necessary to do it, if one would make a readable book."

"Then I should let the book slide,—rather than slide myself."

"If you would do me the honor to listen," I said, scornful of his paltry attempt at wit, "you would see that the book is the object of my travelling. I travel to write. I do not write because I have travelled. I am not going to subordinate my book to my adventures. My adventures are going to be arranged beforehand with a view to my book."

"A most original way of getting up a book!"

"Not in the least. It is the most common thing in the world. Look at our dear British cousins."

"And see them make guys of themselves. They visit a magnificent country that is trying the experiment of the world, and write about their shaving-soap and their babies' nurses."

"Just where they are right. Just why I like the race, from Trollope down. They give you something to take hold of. I tell you, Halicarnassus, it is the personality of the writer, and not the nature of the scenery or of the institutions, that makes the interest. It stands to reason. If it were not so, one book would be all that ever need be written, and that book would be a census report. For a republic is a republic, and Niagara is Niagara forever; but tell how you stood on the chain-bridge at Niagara—if there is one there—and bought a cake of shaving-soap from a tribe of Indians at a fabulous price, or how your baby jumped from the arms of the careless nurse into the Falls, and immediately your own individuality is thrown around the scenery, and it acquires a human interest. It is always five miles from one place to another, but that is mere almanac and statistics. Let a poet walk the five miles, and narrate his experience with birds and bees and flowers and grasses and water and sky, and it becomes literature. And let me tell you further, Sir, a book of travels is just as interesting as the person who writes it is interesting. It is not the countries, but the persons, that are 'shown up.' You go to France and write a dull book. I go to France and write a lively book. But France is the same. The difference is in ourselves."

Halicarnassus glowered at me. I think I am not using strained or extravagant language when I say that he glowered at me. Then he growled out,—

"So your book of travels is just to put yourself into pickle."

"Say rather," I answered, with sweet humility,—"say rather it is to shrine myself in amber. As the insignificant fly, encompassed with molten glory, passes into a crystallized immortality, his own littleness uplifted into loveliness by the beauty in which he is imprisoned, so I, wrapped around by the glory of my land, may find myself niched into a fame which my unattended and naked merit could never have claimed."

Halicarnassus was a little stunned, but, presently recovering himself, suggested that I had travelled enough already to make out quite a sizable book.

"Travelled!" I said, looking him steadily in the face,—"travelled! I have been up to Tudiz huckleberrying; and once, when there was a freshet, you took a superannuated broom and paddled me, around the orchard in a leaky pig's trough!"

He could not deny it; so he laughed and said,—

"Ah, well!—ah, well! Suit yourself. Take your trunk and pitch into Vesuvius, if you like. I won't stand in your way."

His acquiescence was ungraciously, and I believe I may say ambiguously, expressed; but it mattered little, for in three days from that time I took my trunk, Halicarnassus his cane, and we started on our travels. An evil omen met us at the beginning. Just as I was stepping into the car, I observed a violent smoke issuing from under it. I started back in alarm.

"They are only getting up steam," said Halicarnassus. "Always do, when they start."

"I know better!" I answered briskly, for there was no time to be circumlocutional. "They don't get up steam under the cars."

"Why not? Bet a sixpence you couldn't get Uncle Cain's dobbin out of his jog-trot without building a fire under him."

"I know that wheel is on fire," I said, not to be turned from the direct and certain line of assertion into the winding ways of argument.

"No matter," replied Halicarnassus, conceding everything, "we are insured."

Upon the strength of which consolatory information I went in. By-and-by a man entered and took a seat in front of us. "The box is all afire," chuckled he to his neighbor, as if it were a fine joke. By-and-by several people who had been looking out of the windows drew in their heads, rose, and went into the next car.

"What do you suppose they did that for?" I asked Halicarnassus.

"More aristocratical. Belong to old families. This is a new car, don't you see? We are parvenus."

"Nothing of the sort," I rejoined. "This car is on fire, and they have gone into the next one so as not to be burned up."

"They are not going to write books, and can afford to run away from adventures."

"But suppose I am burned up in my adventure?"

"Obviously, then, your book will end in smoke."

I ceased to talk, for I was provoked at his indifference. I leave every impartial mind to judge for itself whether the circumstances were such as to warrant composure. To be sure, somebody said the car was to be left at Jeru; but Jeru was eight miles away, and any quantity of mischief might be done before we reached it,—if, indeed, we were not prevented from reaching it altogether. It was a mere question of dynamics. Would dry wood be able to hold its own against a raging fire for half an hour? Of course the conductor thought it would; but even conductors are not infallible; and you may imagine how comfortable it was to sit and know that a fire was in full blast beneath you, and to look down every few minutes expecting to see the flames forking up under your feet. I confess I was not without something like a hope that one tongue of the devouring element would flare up far enough to give Halicarnassus a start; but it did not. No casualty occurred. We reached Jeru in safety; but that does not prove that there was no danger, or that indifference was anything but the most foolish hardihood. If our burning car had been in mid-ocean, serenity would have been sublimity, but to stay in the midst of peril when two steps would take one out of it is idiocy. And that there was peril is conclusively shown by the fact that the very next day the Eastern Railroad Depot took fire and was burned to the ground. I have in my own mind no doubt that it was a continuation of the same fire, and if we had stayed in the car much longer, we should have shared the same fate.

We found Jeru to be a pleasant city, with only one fault: the inhabitants will crowd into a car before passengers can get out; consequently the heads of the two columns collide near the car-door, and there is a general choke. Otherwise Jeru is a delightful city. It is famous for its beautiful women. Its railroad-station is a magnificent piece of architecture. Its men are retired East-India merchants. Everybody in Jeru is rich and has real estate. The houses in Jeru are three stories high and face on the Common. People in Jeru are well-dressed and well-bred, and they all came over in the Mayflower.

We stopped in Jeru five minutes.

When we were ready to continue our travels Halicarnassus seceded into the smoking-car, and while the engine was shrieking off its inertia, a small boy, laboring under great agitation, hurried in, darted up to me, and, thrusting a pinchbeck ring with a pink glass in it into my face, exclaimed, in a hoarse whisper,—

"A beautiful ring, Ma'am! I've just picked it up. Can't stop to find the owner. Worth a dollar, Ma'am; but if you'll give me fifty cents"—

"Boy!"

I rose fiercely, convulsively, in my seat, drew one long breath, but whether he thought I was going to kill him,—I dare say I looked it,—or whether he saw a sheriff behind, or a phantom gallows before, I know not; but without waiting for the thunderbolt to strike, he rushed from the car as precipitately as he had rushed in. I was angry,—not because I was to have been cheated, for I have been repeatedly and atrociously cheated and only smiled, but because the rascal dared attempt on me such a threadbare, ragged, shoddy trick as that. Do I look like a rough-hewn, unseasoned backwoodsman? Have I the air of never having read a newspaper? Is there a patent innocence of eye-teeth in my demeanor? Oh, Jeru! Jeru! Somewhere in your virtuous bosom you are nourishing a viper, for I have felt his fangs. Woe unto you, if you do not strangle him before he develops into mature anacondaism! In point of natural history I am not sure that vipers do grow up anacondas, but for the purposes of moral philosophy the development theory answers perfectly well.

In Boston a dreadful thing happened to me,—a thing too horrible to relate. I have no reason to suppose that the outrage was intentional; but if I were absolute monarch of all I survey, there is one house in one street in Boston which I would have razed to the ground; and tobacco I would banish forever from the haunts of civilization.