Passing onward and still onward, for this columnar structure bounds a great extent of seacoast, you come upon a vast gateway of stone work, like the rest, but formed into a wide arch, not Gothic, nor Norman, but unique, and perfect as peculiar. Its entrance is kept by huge waves, that for centuries have been rolling higher and higher, to bar the gateway that is open still, so your tiny boat rises with their swelling, and you pass through, not, as you had expected, to find the sky above you still, but into the recesses of a mighty cavern, whose vaulted roof is formed of stones, many cornered and many colored. You should be there at sunset, as we were, to see the dashing waters sparkling with gold, and the stones radiant with crimson light. You would be awed into silence; for there is something fearful in the thought of a chamber built without hands; but should your feelings find vent in words, your ears would be stunned by the deafening sound of even your sweet voice, dear Bel, so heavy is the echo there. I had been always very anxious to see the inside of this famous cave, with its ocean door, and its stony wall hung with sea-weed tapestry, but I assure you I was not less eager to see the outside of it again; I had no ambition to interfere with a solitude too desolate for aught save the cawing of rooks, and the twittering of swallows.
The average height of the basaltic columns constituting the Giant’s Causeway is thirty feet; but the whole neighborhood is strewn with detached fragments of the same species of rock, that in their picturesque confusion seem the broken pillars of some ruined temple. These columns in combination, these heptagons, hexagons, octagons and triangles all joined in perfect symmetry, as if hewn for corresponding measurements, form, when you have climbed the rocky ascent to their level summit, a tessellated pavement, where one may promenade in scorn of the fierce waves that incessantly dash against their base, as if they sought to hurl the firm rocks into oblivion. It is quite amusing to listen to the wonderful harangues of the numerous barefooted urchins that follow you all the way along the shore, offering themselves for guides, and their tongues for teachers. They were all born within sight of the “auld Giant’s” dominions, and the only history they ever learned is comprised in wild legends about the stones and crannies that the giant once ruled. From morning to evening they walk before you, behind you, and seem to rise from the stones on every side of you, offering their “spacermens” of the “Giant’s Punch Bowl,” “his honor’s walking-stick,” and various other remarkable relics, “the very last” of which has been sold and resold for twenty years back, and will be for twenty years to come, to every visitor who will “lend them the loan of a sixpence to break their fast with.”
The little ragamuffins tell you that their father is dead, and their mother is poor; and in the grief of your heart you buy, and buy, and buy, until you have no more money to pay, and no more hands to carry their useless pebbles; and finding new faces, and hearing new tales continually, the plot thickens so unmercifully, that you cease to believe any thing because you have believed so much, and in self-defense are forced to turn away from the masonic pile that owns no mason—from the old arm-chair that no cabinet-maker ever planned—from the huge bowl where none but a giant could drink—and the organ-pipes to whose identity the roaring waves lend so real an illusion. But a sight of the Giant’s Causeway, in spite of its nonsensical traditions and its fabulous legends, is a commentary too impressive ever to be forgotten, on the power and might of its great Creator. And long years hence it will stand, firm and enduring, as it ever has stood, in its solemn, awful grandeur, to annihilate the atheist’s doubt, and to silence the sceptic’s sneer.
HYMN,
FOR THE DEDICATION OF A CHURCH.
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BY REV. S. DRYDEN PHELPS.
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How glorious is thy dwelling,