directions; some lying almost horizontally, and others forming segments of circles. In one place they are so disposed as to present the most striking resemblance to the timbers of a ship of war which had been wrecked, and one half swept away by the tide.

By far the most striking object, however, in the island, is Fingal's Cave, so named in honour of the hero of Morven, celebrated in the poems of Ossian. This magnificent temple, erected, as it were, by the hand of nature to put the pride of man to shame, is two hundred and thirty-seven feet in length, fifty-three in breadth, and one hundred and seventeen in height at the entrance. The sides are entirely composed of basaltic columns, such as have been already described; and the roof is formed by a dense mass of similar materials. The bottom of the cave is occupied by the sea, which is eighteen feet deep at the mouth; and the effect produced by the rolling of the waves inwards, and dashing in succession against the bases of the columns, is singularly grand. In very calm weather a boat might enter the cave; but, should the slightest swell ensue, the attempt would prove fatal to the adventurous voyager. A safer as well as a more appropriate access is along the southern extremity of the island, over a broad pavement of broken pillars, by which the traveller is conducted to the very entrance; and by following which he may, if he possess a steady head and some portion of courage, penetrate even to the farthest extremity of the cave. The attempt, however, is not unattended with hazard; the footing being at all times exceedingly slippery, owing to the continual dashing of the spray against the sides of the cave.

The prudent traveller, therefore, will probably content himself with the view to be obtained from the entrance; and, as he measures with admiring eyes the height and regularity of the columns, the majesty of the superincumbent mass, the depth of the cavern, and the unceasing play of the tide upon its sides, he will be constrained to admit that, take it all in all, he never witnessed such a scene before. And if, in the enthusiasm of the moment, he glances back upon the ages that are past, and reflects that the splendid specimen of nature's workmanship before him has stood in nearly the same simple majesty since the world began, while the most august efforts of human skill and ingenuity have crumbled into dust, or lie with scarcely one stone above another-he will feel, stealing over his mind, the humiliating thought, that the labours of man are perishable like their founder; and that the immortality, which he vainly endeavours to acquire by them, is as baseless as the prostrate column around which the grass has twined, and the serpent crawls.

Or if, as he gazes on the sublime yet solemn temple, thus reared to nature's God amidst a wilderness of waters, he chooses to spiritualize the ideas that flit through his mind, he will be enabled to remember many striking passages of Scripture, which may afterwards, when recalled in connexion with Staffa and its cave, prove the source of much edification and delight. The rock on which he stands, unshaken amidst the war of elements, and coeval with the world itself, will remind him of that Rock of ages, on which all the sinner's hopes and all the believer's expectations are founded. The spacious and lofty cavern, moulded after the simili