depth and strength of the tide, which rolls in deep and heavy swell up to the extremity of the vault; the variety of tints formed by white, crimson, and yellow stalactites, or petrifactions, which occupy the vacancies between the base of the broken pillars forming the roof, and intersecting them with a rich, curious, and variegated chasing occupying each interstice; the corresponding variety below water, where the ocean rolls over a dark red or violet-colored rock, from which, as from a base, the basaltic columns arise; the tremendous noise of the swelling tide, mingling with the deep-toned echoes of the vaults, are circumstances elsewhere unparalleled."

To this we need only add, that Fingal's Cave is about two hundred and thirty feet deep, and at flood-tide and in moderate weather, a boat may sail from its entrance to its extremity. The height from the water to the centre of the roof is nearly seventy feet, and the columns that line. its sides are nearly perpendicular.

THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY.

DUE south of Staffa, eighty or ninety miles across the sea, and forming almost the northeastern extremity of Ireland, we find another magnificent collection of basaltic columns, called the Giant's Causeway.

Indeed the whole coast of the neighborhood, and the opposite island of Rathlin, abound with these wonderful specimens of Nature's architecture: column piled against column, in every variety of combination, accurately chiselled, and in various forms, (some grand, and some grotesque,) by no human architect:-there they stand, as they have stood for thousands of years, a barrier against the Atlantic's stormy billows, which, winter after winter, vainly against those adamantine pillars roll, and roar, and dash their angry spray.

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And yet these appear but to be the relics of a mightier pile, if geologists reason truly. Those," says Dr. James Johnson, in his Irish Tour, "who have explored Staffa, on one side of the Channel, and the Columnæ Gigantis, on the other, must have

come to the conclusion, that these are merely the elevated extremities of a huge chain of basaltic pillars, stretching under the ocean, from the coast of Argyll to that of Antrim. One portion of this stupendous bridge, or causeway, still stands in the midst of a boisterous ocean—namely, the Island of Rathlin, exhibiting the same formation, and presenting perpendicular cliffs of two or three hundred feet in height, to the foaming surge. The Irish extremity of this mighty bridge, or partition, is on an infinitely grander scale than the Scottish. The pillars of Staffa are mere dwarfs compared with their brethren, the Irish giants, on the opposite shore. The basaltic columns of the Antrim coast rise to a stupendous altitude, and present a greater variety of grotesque, majestic, and fantastic figures than the clouds of an autumnal sky during a radiant setting of the sun." "How long this fire-formed barrier, between two boisterous seas-this volcanic chain of connection between two distant coasts, resisted the warfare of winds and waves, no record will ever be found. Nothing now remains on either shore but enormous masses and countless myriads of basaltic columns, wedged into causeways, piled into cliffs, hollowed into caverns, bent into arches, and arched into temples."