Page images
PDF
EPUB

Staffa is about eight miles from the coast of Mull, and presents a very singular rugged table-land, of an irregular, oval shape, about a mile and ahalf in circumference, resting on columnar cliffs, of considerable height, and broken into numerous recesses and promontories. The greatest elevation is 144 feet, which is on the south-western side. The finest view of the island is got by sailing round it, which gives the spectator the opportunity of passing the entrances of all the most celebrated caves, such as Fingall's, Mackinnon's, the Herdsman's, the Clam, or Scallop-shell, the Boat Cave, &c. and the great colonnade and causeway. The dimensions of all these have been given in various works; and many of them the artist's pencil has made familiar to the eye. Near the landing-place occurs the first group of pillars; they are small and irregular, twisted in different directions, but their size increases considerably in approaching the Clam-shell cave, where these magnificent pillars commence, which form the principal attraction of this celebrated spot. Fingall's Cave, called in Gaelic Uaimh Binne, the "Musical Cave," from the echoes of the dashing waves, is the most stupendous of all. The wonders of this cavern cannot be seen to advantage, unless it be entered in a boat. The archway is about sixty feet high, and forty-two wide; and the roof, composed of broken columns, resembles the lofty aisle of a Gothic cathedral. It is here the visitor is most struck with the massy grandeur of this great natural temple of the ocean. The name of Staffa is said to be Norwegian, and signifies the island of pillars it must have been a familiar object to the rovers in those seas, from the earliest ages; yet it is remarkable, that, though one of the greatest curiosities in nature, it should have remained unnoticed, almost unknown, till near the close of the last century.

About nine miles south-west from Staffa, lies Iona, or Icolumbkill, the Isle of St. Columba; or, according to monkish etymology, the "Island of Waves." Few places in the world have acquired so wide a celebrity, for its name and history have become familiar to every reader of our ecclesiastical annals. Much of its fame,

doubtless, is borrowed from its sanctity as an ancient seat of religion ; for tradition says the Druids had possession of it before the birth of Christ; that they had there a college, or school of theology, which continued to flourish, until their expulsion by Columba, about the year 565. At all events, there is no question that Iona deserves the eloquent compliment bestowed upon it by Dr. Johnson, of being "once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion." But there is also truth in what another elegant writer, Doctor Macculloch, says-that the descriptions published of it have given it an importance to which it scarcely possesses a sufficient claim, either from the simple extent, the beauty, curiosity, or even antiquity of its architectural remains, apart from the associations connected with them. It is only when viewed as a solitary monument of the religion and literature of a remote age when reflecting upon it as, at our time, the light of the western world, " a gem in the ocean," that we are led to contemplate with veneration, its silent and ruined structures. Without these reminiscences, the memorable "ruins of Iona" would hardly have attracted sufficient interest to preserve them from oblivion.

The island is about three miles in length, and one and a-half in breadth; the surface being low and unequal, rising into eminences, or small hills, the highest of which does not exceed 400 feet above the level of the sea. It is supplied with abundance of the finest springs, and possesses quarries of beautiful white marble, and extensive rocks of sienite, of which all the remnants of antiquity upon it are constructed. Those relics are altogether ecclesiastical; the tower of the cathedral forming a conspicuous object on approaching the island. It is called the church of St. Mary, and must have been splendid, considering the remote period at which it was built. The other ruins are those of the monastery, the bishop's house, the chapel and burying-place of Oran, one of the companions of St. Columba.

Iona is, par excellence, the island of saints and sepulchres. A long dynasty of bishops, sprung from the founder,

under whom, for several ages, their school continued to be the only university in Great Britain; and so much was it famed for its theology, and the severity of its manners and discipline, that it became a general place of education, not only for the Scottish, but for the English and Irish churches. It soon was regarded as consecrated ground; and the records of the island inform us, that here are deposited the ashes of forty-eight Scottish kingsfour kings of Ireland—eight of Norway-and one of France-besides most of the lords of the isles, and. other chieftains of note. The honour of interment here was long an object of religious ambition with the great families in Scotland, and the grandees of Norway and Ireland-so that Iona became one vast cemetery, to which the illustrious characters of ancient time were carried for inhumation, by their own desire, or the pious wish of surviving relatives, from a superstitious notion that this holy island would escape, at the last day, the general doom of the world. Iona was often desolated, and its cathedral burnt, in the wars of the Norsemen; but it suffered most severely at the Reformation, in 1561, when the Estates passed an Act "for demolishing all abbeys, monasteries, and other monuments of idolatry in the realm." Armed with this decree, the zealous mob fell upon the island, as the most corrupt and venerated seat of Popery-and nothing escaped destruction but such parts of the buildings and relics as were proof against the hands of vio

lence. Of three hundred and sixty crosses, said to have been standing, only three were left. Some were thrown into the sea-others carried off, and many are still to be seen, as grave-stones, in every church-yard in Mull, and the surrounding islands.

Gladly would we have lingered in this Golgotha of the west, and prosecuted our "meditations among the tombs," but our pious reveries were interrupted by a volume of black, dense, curling smoke, which sent its trailing length across the island. There was no mistaking the vapoury signal. The steam began to hiss and roar, the paddles to move, and the inexorable captain proclaimed that "time was up." Bidding adieu to the Druids' graves, and the scattered fragments of monkish devotion and Presbyterian rage, we hurried on board, and, in ten minutes, were again careering on the great Atlantic, full sail towards the Clyde. The towers of Iona sank below the horizon. Colonsay and Oransay glided past, on the one hand-while, on the other, appeared Scarba, Luinga, Jura with its lofty "Paps," and the eddying dangers of the loud Corryvrecken, which seemed to us rather exagge rated, and indebted for part of its horrors, to superstition and poetry. The various sounds and kyles of these intricate waters were, happily, passed in safety; and before the shadow of the evening fell, we were treading the firm pavement of the Broomielaw, in quest of a cab, to catch the last railway train.

SONNETS.

I.

TO OCTOBER.

Of all the months which variegate the year
I love this month the best; for as aware
That Winter soon will come to strip her bare,
Nature with pensive gait approaches near
The confines of her taskmaster severe,

No longer panting in the Summer air,

Wreathing her face with smiles; but not less fair, Tho' deeper shades are darkening round her sphere— Ah! would that this sweet month with longer stride Would take a wider range of fleeting time,

Or that the star which o'er it doth preside

Were fixed for ever in ascendance prime,

Then would no meaner cares our hearts divide, Nor poets sigh for a more genial clime.

II.

England! thou still art strong: where'er I look
Watching the aspect of thy lowering sky:
An earnest speaks in many a kindling eye,
Of hope and power that will not tamely brook
To see thy harvest fall before the hook

Of traitors that unseen in ambush lie

With wolf-like hunger and with jackal cry, Gathering for murderous ends in shades forsook. Who fears for England while that heart still beats Which quailed not at Napoleon! while a head

Still sways our councils, called from faction's heats
To noble triumphs: while Truth's light is shed

From her pure altars; and while Heaven takes part
With her who reigns in every Briton's heart.

III.

"The voice of that eternal ditty sings
Humming of future things."-CLARE.

A voice came to me from the fields of sleep,
A mournful voice, as of a troubled wind
Seeking for something which it could not find,
And always restless. Thus it spoke-" I sweep
On, on for ever; but no purpose reap :

I coast the skirts of heaven, but still am blind;
I see no goal before me or behind,

No barrier meets me in that unknown deep

Yet am I baffled." Words like these methought

Were uttered to my soul, and it replied

"Oh, wandering echo of all hearts! be taught

An humbling lesson. Here with me abide,

Till I, like thee, can wander, and the while
We may with song the weary hours beguile."

B. B. FELTters.

HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

"HISTORY," Lord Bacon tells us, "is philosophy teaching by examples." How few the number who are qualified to extract from it lessons of true wisdom! Lord Plunket seldom exhibited the sardonic sagacity, of which he is possessed, more happily, than when he said, of some of his antiquarian antagonists on "the Catholic question," that their references to history, in its application to present events, were no better than references to an old almanac; and he would himself, perhaps, now acknowledge, that those whom he so severely censured, were not then more ill-judging in their retrospect of the past, than he was himself erroneous and unhappy in his anticipations of the future.

To see, in their principles, the processes by which society is modified, so as to discern the future from the past; to take in, at one steady and comprehensive glance, the various, contradictory, and subtle influences, which determine, in any given country, the condition of the human race; to possess such a grounded knowledge of the nature of man, in all his moral, social, and political combinations, as may lead to just deductions respecting the working of any given system of polity, the accidents to which it is exposed, and the tendencies which it is calculated to foster and generate-this may be pronounced to be one of the rarest gifts of the human mind, and to raise the possessor of it to the very nearest approach to inspired humanity, or even the angelic nature; leaving far behind him the most successful of those whose labours have obtained for them high distinction, in those sciences of which the principles had been already determined, the paths already pointed out, and where each succeeding investigator has been enabled to build upon the foundation laid by another.

When we consider the steady lights which guide the discoverer in the exact sciences, and the settled and certain rules which he must follow, if he would arrive at truth, as compared with the chaotic mass of facts, the "rudis, indigestaque moles," in which

the moral investigator is involved, and out of which he must deduce his prescient conclusions, in the mental la bours of each the difference is almost as great as that between working by instinct, and working by reason.

That moral propositions could be demonstrated with the certainty of the physical and mathematical sciences, is a notion which no one now entertains. The chameleon shiftings of aspect under which they may be viewed, must impart, to any definitions which may be formed of the terms employed, something of their own mutation and instability; so that as men, intellectually, or even complexionally, differ, the same truth will appear different to different minds. The ardent and the sanguine will take one prognostic from events or measures, which, to the cold and cautious, suggest another. The hopeful will often anticipate good, where the desponding can only see coming evil. And thus men's temperaments will influence their judgments; so that the same propositions may often be understood in opposite senses, and the same data lead to opposite conclusions. Thus, when Mr. Fox talked of the French Revolution "as a glorious edifice raised up to Liberty," Mr. Burke could only regard it "as a wall daubed with untempered mortar."

But there are certain broad principles of action which the master-mind alone is competent to discern, amidst all the confusion and perplexity of human affairs; and by the aid of which human sagacity may learn to divine the future, with a certainty very little short of that derivable from strictly scientific demonstration.

We speak not of those lucky guesses, those casual hits, which have been verified by events, and look like prophecies. Of these, the instances are sufficiently numerous, and may excite our surprise without moving our wonder. But what we allude to is, that projection of the mind upon a voyage of discovery into the future, which has sometimes resulted in the ascertainment, by anticipation, of changes

wrought in the constitution of society, the frame-work of government, and the nature of man, by the tendencies of principles which were but recently discovered, or adopted, when the inquiry into their working and influence was first entertained. Here we have a moral phenomenon somewhat analogous to that which would be presented to us, if human sagacity should, from the contemplation of the seed, be enabled to deduce its successive developments, until it arose and expanded into

a tree.

Of isolated facts, discerned in the remote future, the poet, George Herbert, who lived in the reign of James the First, furnishes us with a striking instance, when he says

"I see religion on tiptoe stand,

Ready to fly to the American strand."

How came he to vaticinate with so much correctness? Manifestly because he saw the working of principles which, sooner or later, must rise, in their antagonism, to such a height, that the one must either yield to, or overthrow the other; and that the monarchical and the high church principle was far too strong, in his day, not to compel a treatment of their opponents similar to that which Abraham was compelled to adopt towards Hagar, when the latter was driven into the wilderness. It was not given to the poet to see farther into futurity; to see Puritanism, at first, at bay; and then, in its reaction upon an obnoxious establishment; until, in the end, its multiplied extravagancies provoked a reaction against itself; when better principles, both religious and political, began to prevail, and a very weariness of anarchy, disgust of fanaticism, and dread of military despotism, led to the happy restoration.

The same far-seeing sagacity, the judicious Hooker exhibited, in the preface to his "Ecclesiastical Polity," wherein he describes the progress and development of Puritanism, in language which much more resembles a description of what is past, than a prediction of what was to come; and appears to have been as familiarly conversant with its wildest extrava

gancies, as ever were those who witnessed them in their coarsest or most revolting manifestations.

Of Burke's prescience respecting the revolutionary war, but little need be said; as all our readers are familiar with the sagacity which foresaw its long duration, and predicted its ultimate result-and that, not at haphazard, but from principles inherent in human nature; which his comprehensive mind, penetrating genius, and extensive acquaintance with public affairs, had rendered as familiar to him, as are the elementary truths of any particular science to those who make it their peculiar care.

We have been led into these remarks by the almost accidental perusal of a very rare and curious work,* the publication of which, if it may be said to have been published, bears date 1730. The author, Doctor Samuel Madden, was an Irish gentleman of good family, and a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church. Dr. Johnson, who authenticated upon his authority the marriage of Swift and Stella, speaks of him as an honour to Ireland. He was a great benefactor to the University of Dublin, where he received his education; and the founder of the Dublin Society, which has since done so much to mature and invigorate the germs of Irish genius in painting, statuary, and architecture, and preceded, if it did not suggest, the formation of the London Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures, which aimed at similar objects.

The work of which we are about to give some account, is entitled "Memoirs of the Twentieth Century; being original letters of state under George the Sixth, relating to the most important events in Great Britain and Europe, as to Church and State, arts and sciences, trade, taxes, treaties, peace and war; and characters of the greatest persons of those times; from the middle of the eighteenth to the end of the twentieth century, and the world; received and revealed in the year 1728, and now published for the instruction of all eminent statesmen, churchmen, patriots, politicians, pro

"History of the Twentieth Century," &c. By Samuel Madden, D.D. London: Woodfall. 1730.

« PreviousContinue »