amazement I found a subterranean passage admitting to and from the sea, giving access to the ocean from the castle, entirely independent of the mainland. An army could march through it, to embark or re-embark, with all necessary ammunition-with artillery even. And the doubt iswhether it was made by the hand of man or of God. If by the former, the task must have been immense. It passes directly under the centre of the fortress, making a channel for the sea, which at flood tide will float boats half the way in. It has an irregular arched roof, and is generally, after one has got into it, thirty feet high and twenty feet broad. As I entered alone, not anticipating such a scene, and received the salutation of the mighty waters, which came rushing, and murmuring, and bellowing into that deep and dark cavern-it was awful.

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY.

And yet all this was play; it was like the soft music of the Eolian harp, compared to a like exhibition, to which I was introduced an hour afterward in the vicinity of the Giant's Causeway. The most remarkable cave of all, which can be approached only by water, I was compelled to deny myself the gratification of seeing, on account of the heavy sea which made on the shore. But there was yet one 466 feet long, measured from its mouth to its extremity—and a large part of the way forty feet to the point of the arch, and about thirty feet across-running nearly in a direct line, and sunk so low as to receive high water almost to the further end. This cave is accessible on foot through another one, meeting it nearly at right angles, about 300 yards from its mouth, and being a little higher, so as to exclude the sea. Conducted by my guide through this access-sufficiently difficult and dark-I came to the margin of that awful, neverto-be-forgotten scene. Had the ocean been calm, it would have been a solemn, dismal region. From the point we occupied might be seen 150 feet of the cave on our right, ascending gradually, and coming to a point; and 300 feet on our left, opening on nothing but a troubled sea. Every few minutes a swell came rolling in, that would fill up the mouth of the cave, leaving us in total darkness, and rushing forward with most impetuous fury, as if ten thousand times more mad for its confinement-and it seemed impossible to escape it. The next moment it all lay in fleecy whiteness at our feet, shrinking back in haste and modesty, as if asking pardon for such intrusion. No sooner had this retired than another came, and anon another, and so in perpetual succession. Most of my readers may know how wave follows wave on the shore after a storm. So into this dark subterranean cell the agitated ocean from without unceasingly threw the fragments of his lofty heavings, as if in spite for

the obstacles of the high and rock-bound shore, that came in his way. From the position we occupied, although we could see out, yet the somewhat sinuous line of the cave and the irregularity of the arch confined our vision below the horizon, and veiled entirely from the eye the tumult of the sea. Buried 200 feet beneath the surface of the earth, with a massive mountain of rock impending over our heads, and looking out through an aperture of 300 feet in length upon the ocean collecting its forces, heaping up its waves, and rushing in upon us, as if resolved by a single throw to shut us in for ever-was a scene, the sublimity and the awful grandeur of which cannot be easily imagined. The tremendous rush of the waters, thrown in by the tossings of the deep without, and the startling bellowing which preceded their thundering passage-the momentary darkness which the approach of every wave produced, by occupying the mouth of the cave-were enough, as I need not say, to awe the spirit of the beholder, and extort from him irresistible exclamations of astonishment and wonder. One of my guides had brought a pistol to be discharged in the cave, as is common, to entertain visiters with the singular and astounding effect of its impulses on an atmosphere pent up in the bowels of the earth. I have no doubt that in an ordinary time the report would have been remarkable, and even tremendous in its reverberations. But on this particular occasion it was like the mockery of man's inventions in the face of the artillery of the last day, so feeble was the sound in comparison with the tremendous roar of the waters. The pent-up air seemed in agony to be let loose from the distressful constraint under which it laboured, by the narrow limits of the vault above, and the pressure of the sea coming in from without-and the concussion rushed by our ears to find vent through the passage by which we came.

I am informed, that the proprietor of this shore once planted a small piece of artillery in this spot, and caused it to be let off in the face of a coming swell of the ocean; and that the man who served on the occasion was deprived of his hearing by the violence of the concussion. Well for him that these high crags did not bow themselves in their strength for the punishment of such presumption.

After this, which I came not to see, and never thought to see, what is the Giant's Causeway? It is something notwithstanding-it is even a wonder-and still more wonderful, as it suggests the probability, and produces a very thorough conviction, that it holds a submarine connexion with Staffa, one hundred miles distant on the western coast of Scotland. Staffa and the Giant's Causeway exhibit in all respects the same geological phenomena-and we cannot resist the conviction, from the relations and aspects of the

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two wonders, that they are parts of one stupendous whole, and that the finny tribes of the sea, as they sport themselves between Ireland and Scotland, are privileged with a nearer access to that which man must for ever and in vain covet to see: a very honeycomb of rocks, paving the foundations of the ocean, and showing to the eye of man only little bits of their extreme points and justled ends, but concealing their more perfect and substantial forms under the ever-rolling sea.

The Giant's Causeway and Fingal's Cave are the same thing-the same, I mean, in material and in geological structure. The caves in the neighbourhood of the Giant's Causeway are not to be found among the basaltic columns, as at Staffa. In this particular the caves of Staffa are perhaps more interesting. But the Giant's Causeway, as a whole, in connexion with its adjunct circumstances, I should think, might justly be esteemed a greater wonder of the two.

The remarkable phenomenon in either case is simply this: That immense masses (regions, they might be called) of basalt have received erect columnar formations, varying in the number of their sides from three to nine-the more prevalent forms being the pentagon and hexagon. The structure of the honeycomb, supposing it to be solid, and its elongated forms erect, is a very fair representation of this crystallized basalt. For, although the substance is opaque, it has yet assumed distinct and proper forms of crystallization. These packed columns differ from the honeycomb in wanting exact proportions of sides and angles, in the relations of those of the same column to each other, and of those of one column to those of its neighbours. But each side of every column, whatever may be its proportion to another, or to all other sides of the same column, makes a corresponding side to a neighbour-so that no space is left in the entire mass, which is not occupied by the columnar formation, any more than in a honeycomb. Yet are there no two adjoining columns of equal sides and equal anglesand probably no two in the vast assemblage corresponding in this particular. It is possible, indeed, that accident has made such an agreement-but I presume it has never been ascertained. Suppose a circle to be run in the remotest angles of each column, I should judge, that their diameters would range from nine inches to eighteen-the average perhaps twelve-or midway between these extremes. In this estimate of their relative and average size I speak particularly of the results of my cursory observations, without instruments, of the principal cluster of about 30,000, whose ends are exposed on the margin of the sea, and which seem to have been abruptly broken off at different elevations, so that one may walk over them, up and down, as by stairs, extending one way 725 feet from the cliff, till they dip in

the sea and are lost-and in breadth about half this extent. The sides and angles are perfectly rectilinear, so far as they are exposed, and by presumption universally. And the contact of the whole mass is so intimate, side to side and angle to angle, that not the smallest opening is anywhere discoverable, not even for the admission of water, and probably not of air. Yet the junction is not hermetical-but so far as chymical union is concerned, it is a perfect disjunction. They may all be taken down in perfect form. And what is remarkable, every column has a joint in every ten or twelve inches, composed of a convex and concave surface, perfectly fitted, yet chymically disjunct. The application of a little force, by a sharpened iron bar, would break them up into blocks with the greatest facility. Multitudes of these fragments, thus disturbed, lie scattered over the surface of this interesting and marvellous structure. Notices have been set up by the proprietor, cautioning all visiters against committing any more ravages of this kind. As we descend from the main cliff, or high bank, towards the sea on the tops of these columns compacted in a solid mass, yet each demonstrating its distinct forms by its separate head, being broken off at a different elevation each from every other, they become more and more interesting, till they sink into the ocean, and make us covet earnestly to follow them there.

The position of these columns is generally supposed to be erect, or perpendicular. But this is not always the case. Every undisturbed cluster, or bed of them, however, agrees in this that all of the same mass, if they vary at all, vary equally in their angle of inclination from the erect position -and that is ordinarily slight, though observable to the eye. They are seen all along for miles lodged in the precipitous face of this shore, composing one of its principal features. One stratum is often seen above another with an unorganized stratum of heterogeneous rock intervening. There is one headland, or promontory, presenting an extended range of perpendicular basaltic columns, sixty feet high-another fifty feet-and others all degrees inferior. What is the length of the columns composing the principal, and what is emphatically called, the Causeway, and which appears most perfectly organized, it is impossible to say, as only the upper extremities are generally visible. Except in one place, they present a precipitous side of thirty feet. While the face of this shore offers to the eye every here and there the most perfect ranges of this columnar basalt, there are also interspersed irregular piles, sufficient to leave the impression of the stupendous ruins of one of nature's palaces. In one place there is a cluster of insulated columns, lifting up their heads, some thirty, some forty feet high, on the point of a promontory, which it is said were taken in the night,

by a part of the Spanish Armada, to be the chimney-tops of Dunluce Castle, and were fiercely battered by their cannon, and not a few of them demolished. I stood upon this promontory, looking down upon these insulated columnsand really they seemed to have as much of the forms of the handiwork of man, as many of the ruins of ancient castles to be found in the British Islands. This whole region seems to be disposed to columnar formations. I saw a distinct and magnificent range in the side of a rocky eminence some two or three miles from the shore.

I only record such impressions, as a run and a jump over these remarkable phenomena left behind. And when I say that I had travelled 250 miles by sea, and 50 by land, in two thirds of 48 hours, in perils on the deep, and in perils among beggars, I may perhaps be excused for the slender and superficial information I am able to give of what I saw in the meantime.

Whoever purposes to visit the Giant's Causeway, if he wishes to enjoy tranquillity in contemplating the scenes around and before him, and retire under the best impressions of what he shall have seen, let him fill his pockets with sixpences and shillings, and be prepared to rain a shower of them on the hordes of beggars that will be sure to flock around him. Or else, being in the same manner furnished in his pocket, let him say to them all, as they come in his way, Now this is the only condition on which I will give you any thing-that you keep entirely away from me until I return. Alas! what meanness of spirit and baseness of conduct does the beggary of a community beget.

There

In passing in the mailcoach from Colerain to Belfast, I found myself in company with a lady and her maid. was every thing to interest in her person, mind, and manners, with a single exception: I suspected, and was convinced, that she was under the excitement of some intoxicating drug. It was a singular coincidence, after having been the subject of these mingled and conflicting emotions of respect and diffidence towards a lady of such interesting qualities and commanding powers, that I should have a seat at church with her and her husband the next day in the same pew; and that I should have occasion to observe the expressions of anxiety on the countenance of the husband, as he occasionally cast an affectionate and benevolent glance towards his wife. His eye began to swim; and finding that he could not suppress his emotions, he took his hat and left the church. The reader's conjectures in this case are as good as mine; I only state the facts.

DUBLIN.

The best picture of Dublin is Cook's royal map, on the margins of which are exhibited the Custom-house, Postoffice,