Echoes.
Echoes reside, for the most part, in ruined abbeys, in caverns, and in grottoes; they reverberate among mountains, whisper in the areas of antique halls, in the windings of long passages and in the melancholy aisles of arched cathedrals. There is an ancient portico near the temple of Clymenos, in the district of Cythonias, which repeats every given sound three times.
At Woodstock there was one which was said to have returned seventeen syllables during the day, and twenty in the night. In the sepulchre of Metella, the wife of Sylla, an echo repeated five different times, in five different keys; and it is said that on the banks of a river, near Coblentz, an echo recited seventeen times. He who spoke or sung could scarcely be heard, and yet the responses were loud and distinct, clear and various; sometimes appearing to approach, and at other times to come from a great distance, much after the manner of an Æolian harp.
In the cemetery of the Abercorn family, at Paisley, in the county of Renfrew, there is an echo exceedingly beautiful and romantic. When the door of the chapel is shut, the reverberations are equal to the sound of thunder. Breathe a single note in music, and the note ascends gradually with a multitude of echoes, till it dies in soft and most bewitching murmurs. If the effect of one instrument is delightful, that of several in concert is captivating, exciting the most tumultuous and rapturous sensations. In this chapel, lulled by ethereal echoes, sleeps Margery, the daughter of Bruce, the wife of Wallace and the mother of Robert, king of Scotland.
A singular echo is heard in a grotto near castle Comber, in Ireland. No reverberation is observed till the listener is within fifteen or sixteen feet of the extremity of the grotto; at which place a most delightful echo enchants the ear. Most travellers have heard of the eagle’s nest near Mucross Abbey, on the banks of the lake of Killarney. This celebrated rock sends forth the most fascinating repercussion. Sound a French or bugle horn, and echoes, equal to a hundred instruments, answer to the call! Report a single cannon, and the loudest thunders reverberate from the rock and die in endless peals along the distant mountains.
A nobleman’s seat about two miles from Milan produces such a surprising echo as can scarcely be equalled in the world. Mr. Addison observed that upon firing a pistol, he heard the sound returned fifty-six times, though the air was then foggy, and consequently not proper for making an experiment to advantage. At first, the repetitions were very quick, but the intervals were greater in proportion as the sound decayed. This astonishing echo was probably never designed by the architect, but it is occasioned by two parallel walls of a considerable length, between which the sound is reverberated from one to the other till the undulation is quite spent. Some persons assert that the sound of one musical instrument in this place resembles a great number of instruments playing in concert.