modern days I must leave out entirely, as it would entail far too long a review of triumphs attained by each respectively. I would rather turn to those pleasures which even a superficial knowledge of literature and science affords to the traveller when moving from place to place, and in illustration refer to my recent tour. I cannot, however, go extensively into these, seeing that my journeys have been of a strictly professional character.

How suggestive is a ramble through Cornwall! There you may see, in some parts, huge rocks of granite, fissured by innumerable cracks, each individually as hard as flint, yet many of them crumbling slowly away under the influence of air and moisture. Here an ancient church has its walls still sharp and smooth; there another is honeycombed like an unused cannon: here you see large tracts of sand, and there almost equally large tracts of clay, and you speculate upon the causes of these varied phenomena. You soon see that one rock wears away much faster than another, and that to the decomposition of the felspar of the granite, you owe, on the one hand, the china clay, and, on the other, the common sand, which is nothing more than the disintegrated crystals remaining after the kaolin is washed away. Then comes the almost overwhelming thought, does all our sandstone arise from the gradual disintegration of the primeval rocks? And if so, how vast must be the period that elapsed between the formation of the one and the deposition of the other?

We are tolerably familiar in our own country with deposits of gravel, which are spread over a large surface, but are little prepared for the appearance presented by some of the vast plains we see in France and Italy. On the road to Marseilles, south of Arles, the rail passes over a wide plain, called the Crau, bounded on the east by some low mountains, and on the west by the horizon only; and on looking from the carriage window, we see that it is entirely composed of rounded boulders of various sizes, between which a few stunted plants struggle on in a miserable existence. The ancients were struck with its appearance quite as much as ourselves, Strabo, Pliny, and Eschylus all mention it, the last giving a poetical account of its formation. The modern geologist, however, can see that is simply a plain at the foot of mountains, and which has been at one time the bottom of a roaring torrent; that it forms a part of the Camargue, a district formed by the solid matter brought down constantly by the Rhone; and, making a note in his memory of its appearance, he is enabled by and by to compare it with other plains. The plain on which Pau is situated has a somewhat similar character, though it is covered deeply with loam, and only four miles broad. The traveller reaches Nice, crossing on his way

the turbid waters of the Var, whose river bed, now all but dry, is filled with stones like those on the Crau, and differs from it only in extent; yet, by and by, that river bed will be filled with a rushing stream, the noisy waters of which are rendered hoarser still by the constant rolling of the stones that whirl along its bottom. We take a walk up some of the olive and vine clad valleys towards the southern slopes of the Alpine Spurs. Our road is formed by the dry bed of a torrent, and with steep banks on either side we go on until we are brought up by a perpendicular wall of rock. We look at it with surprise. It looks a "pudding stone," which is only half solidified, and, as the water has coursed down its sides, it has worn away a groove, which seems as if made by some gigantic gouge chisel. We turn upon our steps and take another valley, where we see on one side of us, a gentle slope, and on the other a precipice, four hundred feet or so in height, all made up of this ill-conditioned breccia. We still go on ascending the valley, till at last the gorge is so narrow that we can touch its sides with our outstretched hands. Its course has evidently been worn to its present depth by the watery violence of many hundred years, and its steep walls are now covered with abundance of elegant ferns. We emerge from this "obscure valley," as it is well designated, and come again to another wall of rock, so ill cemented that large masses are constantly falling down. We go to examine these, and find amongst them boulders of granite, limestone, syenite, and other rocks, not to be found in the district. They are all waterwoin, and the granite, where long exposed, crumbles in our hands. Struck by the enormous depth of the deposit, we determined to ascertain its upper level, (its lower one we cannot even guess,) and climbing onwards, made towards the highest mountain, and when we are about 2500 feet above the sea we find the waterworn stones are no longer to be met with, and we come upon a hard limestone rock. We still ascend until we are at the summit, some 3300 feet high, and have a magnificent view but what strikes our eye the most is the mamillated appearance of the hill tops below, showing unmistakeable evidence of the denuding power of heavy rain, and we are no longer surprised at the enormous quantity of detritus in the bed of the rivers. The eye then wanders over ground it already knows, and the mind wonders how it is that there shall be at least 2500 feet depth of pudding-stone rock in one locality, while only three miles away none can be found. In our descent we notice the care with which every moist part of the mountain, where springs seem to promise a steady supply of water, is terraced up and supplied by painful industry with such soil as the implacable rains leave in the limestone pockets; and as we descend by another side of the mountain, we are

surprised to find not a single trace of conglomerate or breccia anywhere. Again excursing to gain a clearer notion of the nature of the soil, we see every condition, from coarse gravel, like the shingle on the shore, to the downright pudding-stone rock, which our feeble appliances refuse to break.

Unprepared to explain these phenomena, we leave Science for a time and turn to Literature. Our will takes us along a road once the admired track of the Roman legions; straight on to the goal, and by the shortest way, they level the rock which opposes them, and turn the angles of the mountains that they cannot climb; we see the ledge they have hewn, and the rugged rocks not yet worn smooth, which they were contented with as pavement; we almost sigh as we find our ideas of the Via Aurelia reduced in dimensions, and conclude that our notions of a good road, and that of the Romans were widely different, -a thought which is the prelude to many another respecting the meanings we give to adjectives used by the Roman authors, and the meanings the writers themselves had. We reach the Corniche road, and find it comes up to our idea of a wonderful work of art, and look back with almost contempt on the puny efforts of the Latins. Yet a few moments given to reflection show that their work was probably superior to ours, considering the materials they had at command; and in pondering on the advantages gunpowder has given to the arts of peace as well as to the art of war, we reach another hill, whose sides give no evidence of deposit of gravel, and on topping its summit we see many a town of vast importance in days gone by. Perched on almost inaccessible rocks, they formed the strongholds for the people around; yet a glance at their position shows that they could never have stood a siege, from want of water.

We take another walk along the river side, and as we reach the mountains we see huge walls of stratified rock, the strata lying at an angle of seventy degrees, and presenting at one part a hard slate and at another a soft shingle, and discover how the one gives the boulders and the other the mud to the rushing torrent. By and by we ford the stream, and make our way to Chateauneuf, (as the guide-book remarks,) "a town of some importance during the middle ages, now a ruin." After a toilsome ascent, and many a pause to admire the scenery around, and the frowning walls of the stronghold, we come to the city on the hill, and reach the town gate. We find that the place consists of a street running along the summit of a razor-backed hill, and that the street is barely a yard wide, and that its town-wall is formed by the outer wall of the houses. No beaten track, even practicable for mules, can be found leading to, or from the gate. A tolerably experienced mountain

eye cannot detect that the rock has even been worn by well-shod feet. Scant, however, was our time for observation, for night was drawing on, and the country was unknown, and no house on our road home was in sight. What speculations did not a smattering of antiquarianism call up here! A town on the top of a hill, in what did it differ from the camps of the ancient Britons, and the strong places of the moundbuilders of America? Where did they get their water, and how could they store their food? Did the people live there? If so, why are the paths not more accessible and smooth? We turn in our dilemma to our guide-book, and find that the people only resorted to these places when invaded by their enemies, and that their usual residence was in the lower valleys. *

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As he extends his journey, the traveller finds his attention called away from the soil to the inhabitants that dwelt upon it, and the habitations they erected for their comfort or their safety.

With Edinburgh and Stirling, Carnarvon and Conway, York and Chester, strong in his memory, with many another British town of ancient note, with many a Rhenish fortress of the good old times when might made right, "when still it was the plan that he should get who had the power, and let him keep who can," in his recollection-with Berne and Sion, and other Swiss fortresses-with many a thought of Jericho, Ai, Jerusalem, and other fortified towns of Palestine, as well as of Thebes, Nineveh, Tyre, and Babylon, and the strong castles of India, and the still ruder remains in Central America and Mexico-the traveller approaches the once famous towns of Italy, and tries to frame some idea of their size, wealth, and importance. Bolsena, the site of the Etruscan Volsinii, is the first that comes under our notice, and we examine with surprise its present contracted appearance, wondering whether the ancient town was much larger than the modern. We see that Pliny declares that it contained 2,000 statues when taken by the Romans, but we cannot help doubting, whether in its palmiest days it contained as many men. Close by a large lake, occupying the bed of an old crater, it must always have been unhealthy and its population low; a surmise which receives some authority from the very few tombstones found recording the deaths of old men, We cross the great Etruscan plain, pass near Ferento and Bomarzo, celebrated for its tombs, and arrive at Viterbo, said to be the Fanum Voltumnæ, the Washington of the Etrurians—are obliged, from considerations of health, to omit Norchia, Bieda, and Castel d'Asso, all interesting from the number of tombs found in and around them, but we can see well, as we rise Monte Cimino, whose forests were for a long time the barrier between Etruria and Rome, that there is nothing in all the plain to

support a teeming population. Sutri and Nepi give us no higher idea of magnificence; and as we proceed and visit Cortona, Assisi, Civita Castellana, Perugia, Fiesole, and a number of other towns, some still surrounded by the original walls, we are compelled to believe that however wealthy the Etrurians were, they were not so numerous as our imagination had conceived. They seem to have been very like the Saxons in England, located in small companies wherever there was a good bit of land and an adjoining hill where they could build a stronghold. With a trade comparatively limited, by want of facilities for carriage, and a soil not requiring much labour to make it bring forth. abundantly, they must soon have fallen into habits of luxury and idleness; yet, like all dwellers in the country, they fought well for their lands, and did not succumb readily to the fierce Romans, who appear to have had a close resemblance to the Danes and Northmen. Small though the towns are in the interior, none appearing larger than York or Chester, those on the coast, where trade was abundant, seem to have been large and flourishing, whether they belonged to Pelasgi, Etruscans, Cumæan, Grecian, or Roman. Core, or Agylla, now Cervetri, was nearly five miles in circumference; Volterra and Tarquinii were about the same; and when we go farther south, we find that Cumo was about the size of Bristol, while Baix, Puteoli, Naples, and Pompeii, may be compared to Beaumaris, Bangor, Hull, and Berwick.

But we are called from ethnological speculations again to chymistry; and in the huge volcanoes scattered up and down we have ample sources from which rivers of theories may flow. Are those gigantic streams of lava, those circular mountains, that enclose lakes of twentyfour miles diameter, those piles of ashes, under which whole towns lie buried, are they the results of a central fire rising to the surface and boiling over like water in a kettle, or are they the result of some chymical action going on in consequence of the juxtaposition of sulphur and some other element? We descend to a stream of lava, barely twelve months old, yet everywhere cool, except in one spot, where, in the yawning crevices, you still find a red hot glow, with a perpetual rising of hot sulphurous gas and a sublimation of pure sulphur. Surely, you are inclined to think, if sulphur can thus keep up heat in an isolated part, it is not difficult to suppose that it may in larger quantity produce it. How interesting, too, is it to notice the huge. craters of past times, and the smaller ones of to-day. Standing on the summit of Vesuvius, we see how much smaller it is than was its predecessor, Monte Somma, and we can see that the high land behind Naples, the Posilippo hill, is part of a crater whose diameter has been about eight or ten miles, but which became extinct, as the head of the