give abundant evidence, by the rate of their descent, that the Great Dismal is higher than the surrounding firm ground. This fact is also confirmed by the measurements made in leveling for the railway from Portsmouth to Suffolk, and for two canals cut through different parts of the morass, for the sake of obtaining timber. The railway itself, when traversing the Great Dismal, is literally higher than when on the land some miles distant on either side, and is six to seven feet higher than where it passes over dry ground near to Suffolk and Portsmouth. Upon the whole, the center of the morass seems to lie more than twelve feet above the flat country round it. If the streams which now flow in from the west had for ages been bringing down black fluid mire instead of water, over the firm subsoil, we might suppose the ground so inundated as to have acquired its present configuration. Some small ridges, however, of land must have existed in the original plain or basin, for these now rise like low islands in various places above the general surface. But the streams to the westward do not bring down liquid mire, and are not charged with any sediment. The soil of the swamp is formed of vegetable matter, usually without any admixture of earthy particles. We have here, in fact, a deposit of peat from ten to fifteen feet in thickness, in a latitude where, owing to the heat of the sun and length of the summer, no peat-mosses like those of Europe would be looked for under ordinary circumstances.

In countries like Scotland and Ireland, where the climate is damp, and the summer short and cool, the natural vegetation of one year does not rot away during the next in moist situations. If water flows into such land it is absorbed, and promotes the vigorous growth of mosses and other aquatic plants, and when they die the same water arrests their putrefaction. But, as a general rule, no such accumulation of peat can take place in a country like that of Virginia, where the summer's heat causes annually as large a quantity of dead plants to decay as is equal in amount to the vegetable matter produced. in one year.

There are many trees and shrubs in the region of the Pine Barrens (and the same may be said of the United States generally) which, like our willows, flourish luxuriantly in water. The juniper trees, or white cedar, stand firmly in the softest part of the quagmire, supported by their long tap-roots, and afford, with many other evergreens, a dark shade, under which a multitude of ferns, reeds, and shrubs, from nine to eighteen feet high, and a thick carpet of mosses, four or five

inches high, spring up, and are protected from the rays of the sun. When these are most powerful, the large cedar and many other deciduous trees are in full leaf. The black soil formed beneath this shade, to which the mosses and the leaves make annual additions, does not perfectly resemble the peat of Europe, most of the plants being so decayed as to leave little more than soft black mud, without any traces of organization. This loose soil is called sponge by the laborers; and it has been ascertained that when exposed to the sun and thrown out on the bank of a canal where clearings have been made, it rots entirely away. Hence it is evident that it owes its preservation in the swamp to moisture and the shade of the dense foliage. The evaporation continually going on in the wet, spongy soil during summer cools the air and generates a temperature resembling that of a more northern climate, or a region more elevated above the level of the

sea.

Numerous trunks of large and tall trees lie buried in the black mire of the morass. In so loose a soil they are easily overthrown by winds, and nearly as many have been found lying beneath the surface of the peaty soil as standing erect upon it. When thrown down, they are soon covered by water, and keeping wet, they never decompose, except the sap-wood, which is less than an inch thick. Much of the timber is obtained by sounding a foot or two below the surface, and it is sawn into planks while half under water.

The Great Dismal has been described as being highest towards its center. Here, however, there is an extensive lake of an oval form, seven miles long and more than five wide, the depth, where greatest, fifteen feet; and its bottom consisting of mud like the swamp, but sometimes with a pure white sand, a foot deep, covering the mud. The water is transparent, though tinged of a pale brown color, like that of our peat-mosses, and contains abundance of fish. This sheet of water is usually even with its banks, on which a thick and tall forest grows. There is no beach, for the bank sinks perpendicularly, so that if the waters are lowered several feet, it makes no alteration in the breadth of the lake.

Much timber has been cut down and carried out from the swamp by means of canals, which are perfectly straight for long distances, with the trees on each side arching over, and almost joining their branches across, so that they throw a dark shade on the water, which of itself looks black, being colored as before mentioned. When the boats

emerge from the gloom of these avenues into the lake, the scene is said to be "as beautiful as fairy-land."

The bears inhabiting the swamp climb trees in search of acorns and gum-berries, breaking off large boughs of the oaks in order to draw the acorns near to them. These same bears are said to kill hogs, and There are also wild-cats, and occasionally a solitary wolf,

even cows.

in the morass.

That the ancient seams of coal were produced for the most part by terrestrial plants of all sizes, not drifted but growing on the spot, is a theory more and more generally adopted in modern times; and the growth of what is called sponge in such a swamp, and in such a climate as the Great Dismal, already covering so many square miles of a low level region, bordering the sea, and capable of spreading itself indefinitely over the adjacent country, helps us greatly to conceive the manner in which the coal of the ancient carboniferous rocks may have been formed. The heat, perhaps, may not have been excessive when the coal-measures originated, but the entire absence of frost, with a warm and damp atmosphere, may have enabled tropical forms to flourish in latitudes far distant from the line. Huge swamps in a rainy climate, standing above the level of the surrounding firm land, and supporting a dense forest, may have spread far and wide, invading the plains, like some European peat-mosses when they burst; and the frequent submergence of these masses of vegetable matter beneath seas or estuaries, as often as the land sank down during subterranean movements, may have given rise to the deposition of strata of mud, sand, or limestone immediately upon the vegetable matter. The conversion of successive surfaces into dry land where other swamps supporting trees may have formed, might give origin to a continued series of coal-measures of great thickness. In some kinds of coal the vegetable texture is apparent throughout under the microscope; in others, it has only partially disappeared; but even in this coal, the flattened trunks of trees, converted into pure coal, are occasionally met with, and erect fossil trees are observed in the overlying strata, terminating downwards in seams of coal.

MACAULAY.

1800-1859.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, who may fairly be described as the most accomplished literary man of his time, was born in Leicestershire, England, in 1800, and died in 1859. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was an eminent philanthropist. The subject of this notice entered Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B. A. in 1822, with a reputation for varied and readily available learning such as few collegians have ever won. In 1826 he was called to the bar, and in 1830 was elected to represent the borough of Calne in Parliament. In that body he was an active supporter of the Reform Measures. In 1834 he was sent to India as a member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta; in 1839 he was made Secretary of War; in 1841 he went out of office, on the accession of Sir Robert Peel; in 1846, the Whigs returning to power, he was appointed Paymaster-General of the Forces, and had a seat in the Cabinet. In 1847 he was defeated in the Parliamentary elections, his Edinburgh constituents disapproving his course on the Maynooth Grant question. Five years later, however, these same constituents chose him as their representative in Parliament, where he served them till 1856, when he withdrew finally from political life. Meantime, in 1849, he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and delivered an inaugural address of great brilliancy. In 1857 his genius and services in literature and politics received merited recognition in his elevation to the peerage, with the title of Baron or Lord Macaulay. Macaulay's first essays in literature were in the department of poetry; during his university career he won two high prizes for poetical composition, and he was a frequent contributor of verse to Knight's Quarterly Magazine. Among his best-known youthful productions were The Battle of Ivry and The Spanish Armada, poems which foreshadowed the maturer excellence of his Lays of Ancient Rome, which were first published in 1842. In the periodical above mentioned Macaulay made his début as an essayist; but his first great triumph in this character is connected with the pages of the Edinburgh Review, in which, in 1825, appeared his masterly essay on Milton, which instantly gave him acknowledged rank among the ablest English critics. This essay was followed by many others, which are familiar to all readers of English, and which as a collection are unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled, in the literature of any nation. The essay on Bacon, though less popular than some of its associates, illustrates with admirable effect the original intellectual power and vast acquired resources of the author. As an essayist Macaulay very closely approaches perfection. His poetry lacks the sensuous element which the public seems to demand in that form of composition, and, vigorous and dramatic though it is in an almost unequaled degree, it has never become popular with the mass of readers. His history has been assailed for its manifestations of partisanship and its occasional inaccuracies. But in the presence of his essays unfriendly criticism has stayed its hand; and even the eye of envy and personal animosity has failed to find any serious blemishes in their beautiful and symmetrical fabric. There is little risk in pronouncing them the most perfect literary products of the nineteenth century. The first and second volumes of Macaulay's History of England" from the time of James II. down to a time which is within the memory of men still living," appeared in 1849, and won immediate success. The work did not, however, escape censure; John Wilson Croker attacked it violently, though his judgment was said to be biased by personal feeling, and Sir Archibald Alison deplored its general lack of candor. But these few protesting voices were drowned in the chorus of applause with which the literary leaders of England and America welcomed the history. All things considered, the writings of Macaulay offer a more remunerative field to the student than do those of any other English writer, except of course Shakespeare. In point of style, construction, and effective utilization of knowledge, they may safely be used as models.

THE PURITANS.

WE would speak of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that

:

runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers.

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the easy good-breeding for which the Court of Charles the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose