height, and from 60 to 100 feet in width. This, | saint, reduced gradually to a monk, evolved it. which is the largest part of the cave, leads to from such damp and dismal material as his dome ter. the Rotunda, which is a vast e over 100 feet in height, and 175 in diame- scious, feeling the influence of the heavy atmos abode furnished. Nay, we begin to feel con When Scandinavia and Britain have but half emerged from old glacial periods, what wonder that they believed in the icy realm of Hela? (whose name, by the way, now denotes the most tropical region of theology!) Surely The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. the Speedwel sent up here do not, indeed, as in phere into which we have come from the burn- In the midst of this grand amphitheatre rose a concretion of about fifteen feet high, that in some measure resembled an altar; from which, taking the hint, we caused mass to be celebrated there. The beautiful columns that shot up round the altar appeared like candlesticks; and many other natural objects represented the customary ornaments of this sacrament. The pious traveller was nearer to the historical origin of the lighted altars of his church than he suspected. Many a hard stony dogma, or half-blocked out creed also, which now builds fair temples in the upper light and air, would under the spear-touch of Ithuriel recede into the gloomy cave where some pursued and hiding One is not at a loss to account even for those monotonous, characterless hells, into which all offenders are supposed to be indiscriminately thrust, when standing beside what our guide calls the Bottomless Pit.' A vast hole is this, of some twenty feet in diameter, and round as if drilled by a gigantic auger over this a bridge has been thrown upon which our guide invites us all to stand, and he then kindles a great red light which, flaring down into it is caught by a thousand crystals which glare from the abyss up to us like the fiery eyes of demons; stalactites glow in the light and become terrible tongues of flame. We hurl huge rocks into this pit, and hear them crashing from side to side, returning shrieking demoniac echoes to us until the ear loses the sound without discerning that any stone has reached the bottom, One of our party, a universalist, plaintively asks the guide if the pit is bottomless, and is evidently much relieved on being told that its bottom has been ascertained to be just 175 feet below. We pass next through Martha's Palace, by Side-Saddle Pit, and enter the glories of Minerva's Dome. The Side-Saddle Pit is a smaller thing of the same kind as that just described. Martha's Palace has in it many crystals of fluor-spar which light up splendidly, and Minerva's Dome was evidently named by some one of classic tastes who saw in the superior whiteness of its pillars formed by the gradual blending of descending stalactites with ascending stalagmites and a certain simplicity in the hall, something of the Greek character. We then came to the Revellers' Hall,' a room of 20 feet in height and 40 in width. After recognising feebly the name of the place, our English friends by taking draughts from their pocket-flasks, and our Americans by whirling a little in dances, which excited such explosions of laughter as must have been acceptable to the genius of the place, we passed through what is called the Scotchman's Trap. This is an ope five feet in diameter, just under a vast stone, Experiments have been made with the object of cultivating these marks into eyes, but without success. It is doubtful, however, whether these animals have received the attention from naturalists which is due to the interest of the subject. These fishes, after being captured, refuse to eat anything provided for them, and though they sometimes live long, do not thrive. They have a skin like that of a the eel, a mouth like that of the cat-fish, and various sauroid characteristics. They have teeth, and one must almost believe the general assertion that these fishes devour each other. Nearly all of them are about the same length which is only kept from falling over the aper- at least in daylight — any object, however ture by a few inches of limestone. A Scotch- near. The latter species is more rarely found man once tried to persuade a party from going than the other, which has mere rudimentary through, maintaining that the big rock must marks for eyes. fall at some period, that it might fall just after they had gone through, in which case they would be all held in a trap. The Scotchman succeeded only in giving his name to one of the many formidable points of the cave. That he was justified by the appearance of the place in his apprehensions we all felt, and indeed, at this point, one of our most swashing and martial' Rosalinds sat down and had a good cry before going through. Next came the Fat Man's Misery.' This is a tortuous, slimy passage, in some parts only a foot in width, and with the ceiling only a foot above one's back, for, of course, we must all crawl through this villanous place, which might well be called eight inches and they are much more Anybody's Misery.' We have to be tied with lively than one might expect in eyeless crearopes, one to the other, there being really dan- tures. They are generally white, but with ger that some one may stick fast between the their wide mouths and horned heads, are not rocks and have to be dragged through by the pretty. The other species which, having eyes, rest. This passage stretches to the frightful makes such poor use of them, I did not see, nor extent of 150 feet, and few are the adventurers did I see the cave-rat, though from the accounts into it who do not echo from their hearts the of it, I suspect that it is that wandering Jew' groans of the fat man whose agonics gave the of rats the Norway- whose squeak even place its name. 'Oh that I were an eel!' the settler beyond the Rocky Mountains is sure gasped our good-sized English lady (to whom I to hear under his floor the moment after he has was harnessed) sotto voce. Our guide relates, nailed it down. Bats are also found in the to keep our courage up, the fearful experience cave. It is a pity that Mammoth Cave has of a lady, too modest to appear in a bloomer, not been explored thoroughly by any naturalist. who tried to go through with crinoline: she got Even Sir Charles Lyell, who has so often visitthrough at last, but the crinoline never did. cd America and explored so many sections of From this we emerged into the Bacon Cham-it, did not visit this cave, which, besides being ber, a small room, from the ceiling of which hang innumerable blunt stalactitic rocks, which have a most curious resemblance to hams, shoulders, sides, jowls, and indeed to every usual cut of pork. After our ordeal in the narrow passage we were quite ready for a piece of ham, and it was suggested that it might have been some weary explorer of an ancient grotto who emerging from a similar labyrinth of misery, came upon hams that he could not eat, that originated the story of Tantalus. After walking over a rocky road for some distance we come to the Dead Sea,' a pool of water formed, doubtless, partly from the rains filtered through the earth, but partly also, like the Zirknitz Sea and others, fed by subterranean fountains. The water is not stagnant, and so must have subterranean exits; but these are probably small and slow, leaving the water perfectly motionless. No fish has, I believe, ever been found in this, pool, which is of an average depth of 15 feet, and is 20 by 50 feet in superficial extent. Very interesting is that part of the Cave in which the various waters are found. The smallest of these is the Dead Sea. Not very far beyond this wo come to the river Styx, after crossing which we soon reach Lake Lethe, and 500 yards farther, Echo River. It is in Echo River that the eyeless fish is found, there being also found in it another species of fish which has an eye with which it cannot see second only to Niagara as a prodigy, presents so many points of interest for scientific study. I should say, from looking at the eyeless fish, that the Proteus of the Illyrian caverns could not be far off. The pleasure-parties which explore the cavern generally give as wide a berth as possible to those muddy flats in the Cave, where, perhaps, lie to day animals as wonderful as that which gave Sir Humphrey Davy the text for his discourse on immortality, preached in the Grotto of the Maddalina, at Adelsburg. And, by the bye, if Socrates could have had the Proteus anguinus, or the eyeless fish, before him, what a dialogue would have been transmitted to us from the Academy! As it is, one can scarcely read the Phaedo without suspecting that, fair as our landscapes seem, we are after all only fumbling about in Nature's cellar, and that we may be dotted from spine to brow with senses unsealable elsewhere than in this dim underworld. The River Styx has been bridged, and Charon's boat is now found only on Lake Lethe and the Echo River. Nevertheless we found crossing the Styx one of the most difficult parts of our journey, for the river has great floods, one of which had not entirely subsided when we were there. To reach the bridge we had to go by a perilous circuit and cross a 'bottomless' chasm, which could only be done by the aid of a Bostonian, who, brave as Curtius and strong as Hercules, stood astride the chasm and lifted the ten or twelve of us one by one over it. The Styx is a rapid torrent, 90 or 100 feet in width. It rises and flows visibly for 450 feet, and then disappears through Caverns fathomless to man, but whether down to a sunless sea no man knoweth. It may be that it reappears as Echo River, and it may be that after being as often swallowed by the earth and disgorged as the Laibach, it stretches somewhere into a beautiful sunlit river, as that does into the Save. singing, floating ever nearer, was the enchantment that kept them still, as the figures of a rich tapestry. Mr. Max Müller has shown us the stately procession of gods and goddesses that has come entirely out of the sun, and has detected in nearly every divine fable a metaphor of some one of its myriad attributes; but who will now tell us how many mythologies have issued from the sunless underworld? Travellers still find the grand Grotto of Antiparos haunted, to the minds of the islanders, with some of the darker powers known to the ancient Greek religion, and Pliny himself mentions the Grotto del Cane, near Naples, as one of Charon's ditches.' The traditions connected with Odin's Mine' at the foot of Mam Thor in Derbyshire, are also significant. The Mammoth Cave seemed to me the original of every oriental or Scandinavian hell, and with the assistance of blue and red lights, it might easily have supplied the models for Milton's Pandemonium, Dante's Inferno, and Swedenborg's Circular Pit, with walls of brass, through which he descended to witness the vastation of souls. Certainly if the Greek Hades were to be represented in a series of tableaux-with its Styx, its ferryman, and the pallid shades wandering on the shore-they could not be better modelled than on the succes sive pictures we beheld whilst traversing these subterranean rivers and lakes. Along huge halls, past great grim figures which should be named Minos, acus, and Rhadamanthus, we moved, awed into silence by the general vastness, and embarked on Lake Lethe. The boat would only hold one half of our party, and so the others had to await the return of the boat. As they stood there with their torches in their queer unworldly attire, gazing wistfully upon us, they seemed the very ghosts of Hades waiting for Charon to take them over to Elysium. And we, too, to them were as shadows. The lake is deep and still, and we are rowed about 150 yards before touching the shore. Still more impressive was the voyage on Echo River. There I waited with some others whilst half of the company went before. After watching some minutes the shadowy barge with its strange human figures and its torches, a moving island of light on a sea of darkness, it disappeared. Presently there came stealing back to us, now full, now faint, as from the beart of the earth, a strain of sweet music, which at length died away. After a while the splash of Charon's oar was heard, and soon we were ourselves floating on the dark, cold river. At a certain point the guide drew from his belt bugle and gave a blast upon it; the effect was beyond that of anything I have ever heard: all around us hundreds of spirits seemed to take up the strain, some yelling it like demons, others plaining like imprisoned Ariels, and the sound was borne from rank to rank of them as by a thousand orchestras. Surely this is the place where that unhappy daughter of Earth and Air, who pines still for her lost Narcissus, has taken up her abode. The finest echoes that I had ever heard before were at Echo Lake, a aim in the White Mountains of New England, where, on a fine day, I have heard an entire bar of music returned five times; and on the great Thoreau, whilst living in his Walden hut, American lakes there are many points where watching the phenomena of frost-vegetation, single sounds may be heard repeated from twelve declared: The Maker of this earth but patented to twenty times; but the echoes in the Mam- leaf. He saw the feathers and wings of birds moth Cave are more distinct, numerous, and as leaves, and the butterfly as an animated musical than I have heard elsewhere. I count detached blossom. The ice begins with delicate ed sixteen distinct returns of the full strain of crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds derings of it. After experimenting on the tree is a larger leaf, and rivers are the veins of the bugle, and half as many more partial ren- impressed by the fronds of water plants. The echoes for some time, we all joined in singing a vast earth-loaf holding cities as ova in its axils. simple tunes, as the Canadian Boat Song,' Nay, is not the human hand truly a palm with 'Adeste Fideles,' and others. Presently we its veins, and the car a lichen with its lobe? turned a point and a light smote upon us; look. Down here in the cavern one feels as if in the forward several hundred feet we saw grouped very laboratory, where the remotest types of the party that was waiting for us. upon a cliff with their torches for foot-lights, things are being fashioned. Here are acanthus, The tableau lotus, vine or prophecies of them. Those one Was of wonderful beauty. The hymn we were sees in the upper world might be the risen ing Among the many grotesque things at which we paused was the Giant's Coffin,' a large mass of stone shaped in the exact fashion of a coffin, the lid slipped a little aside, leaving a crack for us to peep through; and the Ant-eater,' a huge specimen, accurate enough, almost, to have been fashioned by Mr. Hawkins, formed of. black gypsum, on a background of white limestone. Still more striking is the group of the Giant, Wife, and Child,'-the giant in the attitude of passing the child to his wife: one suspects that some human sculptor has been at work on these until the lights are brought close and show the figures to be the rough work of Nature. Martha's Vineyard' is a great curiosity, and excites a general exclamation. The ceiling is studded with nodules of carbonate of lime, coloured by a black oxido of iron, exactly resembling clusters of Hamburg grapes. a spirits, not disembodied but more truly embodied, of these in the underworld. The creation ever goes on under the genii, Water, Limestone, Gravitation, and time; over whom Force and Beauty reign together; but no improvement, it would seem, can ever be made over the simple primal leaf-form, which, however, is Proteus himself, and between this limestone-ivy, and the foliated brain of man, will appear in myriads on myriads of variations, deceiving many, confiding the secret of the Universe to eyes that know the 'light that never was on sea or land.' Coming next to Washington Hall it is announced as the interesting spot where many exploring parties have taken their luncheon: whereupon our hamper is speedily opened and we soon stand with glasses of champagne in our hands ready to drink the toast which some one proposed To G. Washington, Esquire, his Hall!' So far as we were concerned this might have exchanged names with the Revellers' Hall. Going back a few hundred yards I enjoyed the fantastic looks and postures of the company, and their talk and laughter, wrought by the imps of echo into riotous noises, and I thought how easily such a scene would make the fortune of a manager could he reproduce it in some opera which has a revel of robbers or gipsies in it. After this we ascend the 'Rocky Mountains,' then descend into the 'Dismal Hollow' both names graphic-and pass on by an avenue which, bearing the name of Franklin, reminds us to be philosophical. We came to rest in a beautiful white-fringed 'Bridal Chamber,' which revealed a Mentor among us, who reminded a newly wedded pair present of the analogy to married life furnished by the Cave: We enter it with mirth, but soon feel the impression of its solemn revelations. We find that the torch of Hymen lights us on to deeper and ever deeper realms of our own hearts and of life; lights us on, let it be admitted, to hard trials, rocky mounts, dismal hollows, but at last we are sure to come to to' - 'Fat Man's Misery," gently suggested the hopeless case of bachelorhood that we carried with us. There are many fine halls then to be passed through one which seems to have walls of jasper, another in which nitre most abounds, a third remarkable for flashing many brilliant colours, a fourth which has a ceiling made up of exquisite white rosettes, a fifth which in addition to the roses is entirely of a faint pink hue-until, by what seems to be in the brilliancy of its crystals a Valley of Diamonds, we reach what is called the Maëlström, and is the end of the long route. The guide told us that only one man had ever been rash enough to descend the Maëlström, and that he was never heard from again, though a dog that he took with him was found a week afterwards howling and almost famished near a village 15 miles distant. I have learned, however, lately, that a gentleman was lowered by ropes and found the bottom at a depth of 175 feet, with various avenues leading from it. His feat was celebrated by a poct of Kentucky, in the following lines: Down, down, down, Into the darkness dismal, Into the gulf abysmal, And the sepulchral chillness. - On our return we were taken through some of the finest halls and domes of the other route. At one point our guide collected our torches from us, bade us farewell, and in an instant vanished, leaving us in a darkness absolute enough to make one question whether a human being would not be suffocated by unmitigated night. We felt each other's quickened pulses as hand nervously clasped hand, and listened for some movement of the guide; but for a full quarter of an hour heard nothing but our own breathings and saw nothing. At last, as upon a distant horizon, rose the evening star, and soon, as from behind a lifting cloud of blackness, star after star came forth, the Milky Way shimmered along the vault, planets darted red and gold, the constellations Pleiades, Orion, Cassiopeia's Chair, the Great Bear, shone out, a comet with curved and pink faint train appeared, and now and then flashed a fulling star. For a time it seemed that we must have been brought out of the Cave into some ravine, and were gazing into the heavens. It could not be apprehended at once by any of us that even the powerful Maya herself could so cheat the eye, and with a few candles light up such splendour as we now witnessed. It was magnificent, it was thrilling beyond all the sights I had ever seen, and I do not wonder that under it, Emerson conceived his admirable Essay on 'Illusion.' The Star Chamber gives one a new idea of that word, and of the corresponding Power whom the East worshipped as Yoganidra-'the illusory energy of Vishnu,' traceable also in other mythologies. Even when it was announced that we were gazing on the most famous phenomenon of the Cave, we found it difficult to restrain our minds from an occasional suspi 0 the Ento fer cion that we were being tricked by the guide | father of English humourists. It was his, instead of by the Cave, and that it was the first to raise and ennoble humour, and to real heaven of fires we were beholding. make it the vehicle of long trains of serious Impressive was the lesson of higher and low-ideas. The novelists of a later period, cr. What I tread under-foot may be, it seems, taught by him, used it to solve social and a star-sown sky to some lower earth. The light of one whole day is much to pay Jones," "Roderick Random," political problems; but "Pamela," "Tom "Tristram for anything, but it was well laid out in seeing that superb vault alone, with its crystal gal- Shandy," and "Gulliver" would never have axies. And yet the loudest shout of surprise existed if Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and joy evoked from our party that day was Sterne, and Swift had not moulded their when were next greeted by the burst of sunlight various fictions after the models set them in at the Cave's mouth. Whether it was that Sir Roger de Coverley," "Will Honeyour eyes had been so long adapted to the va- comb," and the exquisite allegories and pours and glooms of the grotto, that they novelettes which the Spectator issued daily struck from the light, those colours which, from Mr. Buckley's, in Little Britain. At according to Goethe, are but the minglings of white and black, or whether the resplendence of the ferns and bushes just sprinkled by a light summer shower; certain it is that we seemed to be gazing upon a cascade of manyhued jewels; and grand as had been the scenes beneath, we acknowledged that the culminating transformation-scene was at last wrought by the light of the day. There are,' said Damodara, none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.' Thic eagerness with which we rushed into the sunshine once more, and our joy in it, seemed to bint at some old force in Nature leading the upward procession of forms, which through ever-refining senses have been in the ages emerging from under to upper worlds. From the London Review. last their humour became old-fashioned. It belonged to the time of ruffles and laced coats, and another patriarch of wits was wanted to amuse the public. About the year 1820, a middle-aged gentleman, in a rusty brown suit was seen daily passing to the East India House, in which he had long been a clerk. In his leisure hours he rambled from street to street in the heart of London, observing every quaint old building, and halting at every book-stall to pry into the mustiest volume he could find. He was known to few, and these for the most part were bookworms like himself. He had published a few poems of doubtful merit, but none of them would sell. He was a scarecrow to publishers and editors; but there were among his intimate associates two or three who knew his genius, and prevailed on him with much importunity to appear in the London Magazine as an essayist, under the name of "Elia." From that day Charles Lamb was known to fame; his friends multiplied; his rusty brown was exchanged for decent black; and the seed which he had cast so gently took deep root in the minds of less original but more popular humourists. There was this difference between Addison and Lamb, Addison's was the humour of wisdom and of principles, Lamb's that of the feelings and of sentiment. Addison spoke to the mind, Lamb went straight to the heart. Addison was always didactic, and sometimes entertained his subscribers with papers exactly like sermons THERE has been from the commencement of society a constant process of unseen husbandry going on in the world of mind. Seeds of thought are sown, harvests are andreaped and gathered into garners. The fruit remains; and the value of the seed is estimated by its power of multiplication. Great husbandmen arise from time to time, and these fathers of distinct schools of thought and style, like founders of religious orders, pervade society with their disciples and institutions long after they have passed away. It is only as time goes on that the potency of their broadcast is found out. In their day, perhaps, they were small and mean. Their heads scarce rose above the furrows where they scattered their deathless seed; and even when they saw their work thriving, they little imagined how great would be its results. Men laughed and joked, no doubt, before the days of Queen Anne, yet Addison may fairly be styled the 70% ing do with meditations among the tombs of Westminster Abbey, or a discourse on the Passion, for Good Friday. Lamb, on the contrary, never preached. He was even less religious in his essays than in his own mind. His aim was simply to amuse. He left the moral of his stories to be inferred, eschewed the pedant, and depicted things as they are rather than as they should be. Addison wrote for a state of society less advanced, when much was to be learnt and |