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formed by the rocks so removed, and these being constantly extended, open at length extensive passages, through which the communications are made. But both this origin of lavas and the existence of such excavations are denied by some geologists, and yet there are many stubborn facts in favour of both suppositions. Deep caverns, we know, are often found in volcanic mountains; the isle of Vulcano, one of the Liparis, according to Dolomieu, is a cone completely excavated, in which a second cone has risen, leaving a sort of corridor an hundred paces wide between the outer and the inner, and Dr Webster explored very spacious caverns in St Michael, the bottoms of which seemed to him to be the roofs of others still lower. Were it possible to get nearer the bottom of these dark, unfathomed caves, one might find perhaps some of the rocks in which they are formed, in all the various stages of their passage from the primitive into the volcanic.

If this island and most of the others of the cluster be one entire volcanic formation above the surface of the water, as seems to be clearly shown, and if, as we suppose, the mountains upon them be the work of a single eruption, what idea can be formed of the magnitude and grandeur of the convulsions which produce them. Pico raises itself above the level of the sea nearly or quite nine thousand feet, and the highest points of St Michael are estimated by Dr Webster to be five thousand; and yet these are but ant-hills compared with the stupendous volcanic domes of Chimborazo, Pitchincha, and Cotopaxi. Are there any operations of nature which afford nobler subjects for man's contemplation and examination than these, and are there any sublimer points from which her great works can be viewed? But how easily is human curiosity baffled and human science confounded: after all the researches, which have been made, what secret of hers has been discovered! Can the geologist, who has visited all the volcanos of the old and new world, and looked down into their craters, and spent months in examining the streams of lava, which have issued from them, and years in his own little laboratory in analyzing and decomposing and compounding them, say how the process is carried on in the great laboratories of nature, of which these craters are but the ventilators? Can he tell us how these ever-burning fires were kindled, or how they are supplied with combustible materials, or by what force it is that mountain masses of rock are thrown to the height of miles

from the depths in which they are formed, or how some parts of a substance come forth completely changed by the fusion it had undergone, and other parts of the same untouched and unchanged. No; these are questions beyond the reach of human powers, but the science of geology is nevertheless not an useless one, nor does it busy itself in vain with the inquiries which the work under consideration is intended to advance. The changes which have taken and are continually taking place on the surface of the earth by the agency of the different elements, of which the greatest are by that of fire, are phenomena, which fairly offer themselves to our examination and which must be studied by those, who wish to understand the natural history of the globe we inhabit. All who are interested in such inquiries will derive great satisfaction from this work, which has the rare merit of recording facts, not encumbered with perplexing speculations; and those who seek for entertainment only in a book of travels will find much of that in the parts of it devoted to general descriptions. It is entitled to every commendation for the simplicity, neatness, purity, and perspicuity of its style, for the general correctness of its language, and for its pleasant and sprightly manner of narration. An appendix is added after the description of St Michael, giving a short account of the other islands of the cluster, of which four only, Fayal, St George, Pico, and Terceira, are mentioned as volcanic. Fayal is a place of considerable trade, principally in fruit and in wine brought over from Pico, which abounds in vineyards. Terceira derives its chief importance from being the seat of the government. Flores and Graciosa deserve to be mentioned for the sake of their pretty names, if for nothing else; St Mary, the most southern of the groupe, is distinguished as the first which was discovered; and Corvo, the most northern, by nothing, as far as our knowledge of it extends, except for having been recommended by Ashe as a place of transportation for British felons.

The pleasure which we have derived from reading this work has been much increased by the circumstance of its being the production of an author of our own. Our national

pride is gratified in seeing such an encroachment upon the dominions of the old world, and in thus preoccupying a field for scientific research, which geographers, unjustly perhaps, have assigned to the other hemisphere. A roving disposition is said to be one of the characteristics of our national character. New Series, No. 9. 7

It has, however, until within a short time, been rather a roving in search of fortune, than of knowledge; at least we have a right to presume so, for a dozen years ago we were none the wiser for what our own travellers had seen. It is now quite otherwise; our contribution of late to the stock of voyages and travels has been very generous in respect to quantity, and, in many cases, we may add, very respectable as to quality. Exchanges and marts and quays are no longer the only parts of an European city which our countrymen frequent; numbers of them are now every where found in the circles of men of letters, in the lecture rooms of the universities, cultivating their tastes in the galleries of the arts or amid the beautiful ruins of antiquity, searching into all the wonders of the animal and vegetable and mineral kingdoms at the jardin des plantes or at the école des mines, or surveying the heav ens through the telescope of Herschel. This, to be sure, is making great and rapid advances in the acquisition of a national literary character; but it would be far better if we had the means for the same degree of cultivation within our own borders. Genuine, glowing patriotism proceeds in part from prejudices in favor of one's country, and these prejudices are very liable to be scattered by the comparisons, which travellers are sometimes obliged to make in foreign lands, to the disadvantage of their own. It is delightful to have conversed with the Platos and Ciceros, the Homers and Virgils, the Sapphos and Corinnas of the age in which we live, but should we chance to have found them in a foreign country instead of in our own, we might have been in danger of leaving some portion of our affections, where we had been obliged to leave so much of our admiration. Barthelemi makes his Scythian say, that in his youth he had sought happiness among nations the most enlightened, and that at a more advanced age he found repose among a people, which knew only the gifts of nature; and repose is all that any man could desire, the finest years of whose life had been spent in Greece. When he should come to wear out the residue of them among such a people-there would not be interest enough left in it to prompt to any exertion or enterprise.

We have wandered from our subject to drop an incidental remark on the dangerous influence of foreign travel. We now return to it, to say, that if all who go abroad for the purposes of information would bring home with them a volume as val

that a translation is an adequate substitute for the original, and that there is no absolute need either of Greek or Hebrew, provided a man can read his mother tongue.

We are inclined to admit the accuracy of professor Stuart's assertion, who maintains, in one of his notes, that the worst translation which was ever made of the scriptures, contains all that is essential to religion, either as it respects doctrine or practice. Some translations, he observes, have added things to the scriptures which religion does not require, and some have made one part of the bible to gainsay another; but the worst translation never removed nor wholly obscured the great and leading principles of revealed religion. This is readily admitted, and we may add too in regard to the English translation in particular, that in the main it is a good one, that it is extremely creditable to the age in which it was made, and would probably be a real sufferer, if it were trusted in the hands of modern English divines for the purpose of being amended.

But, although it may be considered by some a gratuitous assertion on our part, we appeal to the experience of every real scholar in our behalf, when we say, that the best translation existing, whether of the classics or the Bible, fails in a vast number of instances of conveying the precise shape and the true spirit of the original. This results necessarily from the imperfection of language, and is more especially true in regard to versions made from the Hebrew and Chaldaic, in which the Old Testament is written, because these languages differ so widely in many important respects from those of Europe.

We have good translations in English of many of the classics, but certainly the man would gain no credit to himself, who should seriously maintain his thorough acquaintance with the style, the general spirit, and the peculiarities of Homer, from merely having read him in the Iliad and Odyssey of Pope, or even in the more literal version of Cowper. It is not surprising, then, that many parts of our common version, for instance, the books of Job and Isaiah, should convey an imperfect notion of the splendid beauties of their originals. Nor can an adequate acquaintance with those beauties, nor indeed in all cases with the grammatical sense, be obtained even by the additional aid of a commentary.

That the inadequacy of translations cannot be compensated by the aid of a practical or religious commentary merely is

rocks, sometimes imbedded in the masses of pumice, which in many parts of the island cover a great extent of surface. These two volcanic products are observed constantly passing from one into the other, leaving it scarcely possible to distinguish the line of separation, still less to doubt that they were at one time the same identical substance. All the other marks by which the mighty effects of the agency of fire are recognized, such as scoriæ, volcanic sand, ashes, tuff, breccias, and lava in every state of decomposition and new combination, are spread over the whole island, so as to leave no doubt which of the elements has exercised dominion there. A farther resemblance to the volcanos heretofore known is observed in the minerals found by Dr Webster among the rocks of St Michael, which had undergone either but a slight or no change by the action. of fire. Those mentioned by him are felspar, augite, hornblende, olivine, mica, haüyne, leucite, arragonite, and oxidulous iron, but he does not appear to have found either meionite, nepheline, or pleonaste, which are thus far the peculiar characteristics of Vesuvius. In many respects, however, the masses, which contain these minerals from St Michael, have a striking resemblance to those from Vesuvius, particularly a semivitrified kind of felspar, which we doubt not is the eisspath of Werner and the German mineralogists. We trace also an almost perfect similarity to the solfatara of the Campi Phlegræi, in his description of the country around the Caldeiras:

'As we pass along the narrow road from the village to this spot,' says our author, the gradual change from a fertile to a barren soil is observed, and within a few yards of the hot springs, nearly all traces of vegetation are lost. At the extremity of the road, the ground is almost snow white, and then acquires a reddish tinge; this increases in intensity and brightness, and finally passes through an infinite variety of shades to a deep brown. The vicinity of the springs is indicated by the increased temperature of the earth, a sulphureous odour, and the escape of vapour or steam from every crack and fissure in the ground. The volumes of smoke and steam rolling upwards from the surface to a great height, till they are gradually diffused through the atmosphere, or mingle with the heavier clouds that crown the summit of the mountains, produce a striking effect.

A few yards from the principal Caldeira is an elevation of about fifty feet in height, and probably as many in extent, composed of alternate layers of a coarser variety of sinter and clay, including grass, ferns, and reeds in different states of petrifac

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