gas every twenty-four hours. But we might fill a volume with mere glimpses of this wonderful city-such volumes exist-and yet before a visitor can form an adequate idea of its size and its population, its abounding wealth and its squalid poverty, its contrasts of magnificence and wretchedness, he must have persevered day after day in exploring its various quarters, mixed with all classes of society, inspected its hospitals and its mansions, its picturegalleries and its temples, its docks and its bridges, its dark corners of crime and misery, its splendid exhibitions of wealth and taste; and if he have a heart to feel and a head to think, he will go to his rural home with food for meditation for many days, a wiser, and, if he improve his opportunities, a better man.

STAFFA, AND FINGAL'S CAVE.

THE stormy sea that dashes against the western shore of Scotland is studded with a multitude of rocky islands, of various shapes and sizes, known as the Hebrides, or Western isles. Of these, one of the smallest, but in some respects the most remarkable, is Staffa, of which our illustration presents a view from the sea.

It is in shape an irregular oval, about a mile and a half in circuit, and except at the solitary landing-place on the northeast, is bounded by precipitous cliffs, hollowed by numerous caverns. The cliffs are, as may be seen from the cut, for the most part formed of basaltic columns of a regular geometrical shape; each column being generally about two feet in diameter, and having either five, six, seven, or nine equal sides and angles, and varying in height up to one hundred and forty-four feet above the

sea.

Of the numerous caves that have been worn through the lapse of ages by the ceaseless surge of the Atlantic, the most celebrated is Fingal's Cave :

"That wondrous dome,

Where, as to shame the temples deck'd
By skill of earthly architect,

Nature herself, it seem'd, would raise
A minster to her Maker's praise!

Not for a meaner use ascend
Her columns, or her arches bend;
Nor of a theme less solemn tells
That mighty surge, that ebbs and swells;
And still between each awful pause,
From the high vault an answer draws,
In varied tone, prolong'd and high,
That mocks the organ's melody."

To this noble description from the Lord of the Isles the author appended a note, which we cannot do better than introduce, secure that a sketch, both in poetry and prose, from such a master of descriptive writing as Sir Walter Scott, will do all that words can do to portray the glorious scene with clearness, unrivalled save to an eyewitness.

"It would be unpardonable to detain the reader upon a wonder so often described, and yet so incapable of being understood by description. The palace of Neptune is even grander upon the second than the first view. The stupendous columns which form the sides of the cave; the