I heard the whizzing sound of the stone as it | Mount Ætna (en amateur) during the last rushed down behind me. A little further on great eruption of that mountain, and acknowit met with an impediment, against which it ledged with laudable candour that Vesuvius bolted with such force that it flew up into the in its grandest moments was a mere bonfire air to a great height, and fell in a shower of in comparison; the whole cone of Vesuvius, red-hot fragments. All this passed in a mo- he said, was not larger than some of the masses ment; I have shuddered since when I have of rock he had seen whirled from the crater thought of that moment, but at the time I saw of Mount Etna, and rolling down its sides. the danger without the slightest sensation of He frequently made me stop and look back; terror. I remember the ridiculous figures of and here I should observe that our guides the men as they scrambled over the ridges of seemed as proud of the performances of the scoria, and was struck by Salvador's exclama- mountain, and as anxious to show it off to the tion, who shouted to them in a tone which best advantage, as the keeper of a menagerie would have become Cæsar himself," Che is of the tricks of his dancing bear, or the tema!-Sono Salvador!"1 proprietor of "Solomon in all his glory" of his raree-show. Their enthusiastic shouts and exclamations would have kept up my interest had it flagged. "O veda, signora! O bella! We did not attempt to turn back again, which I should have done without any hesitation if any one had proposed it. To have come thus far and to be so near the object IO stupenda!" The last great burst of fire had in view, and then to run away at the first alarm! it was a little provoking. The road was extremely dangerous in the descent. I was obliged to walk part of the way, as the guides advised, and but for Salvador and the interesting information he gave me from time to time I think I should have been overpowered. He amused and fixed my attention by his intelligent conversation, his assiduity and solicitude for my comfort, and the naïveté and self-complacency with which his information was conveyed. He told me he had visited was accompanied by a fresh overflow of lava, which issued from the crater on the west side in two broad streams, and united a few hundred feet below, taking the direction of Torre del Greco. After this explosion the eruption subsided, and the mountain seemed to repose; now and then showers of stones flew up, but to no great height, and unaccompanied by any vivid flames. There was a dull red light over the mouth of the crater, round which the smoke rolled in dense tumultuous volumes, and then blew off towards the south-west. WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND. BORN 1778-DIED 1865. After [Dr. Drummond was born in the month of | published in the troublous year 1798, entitled August, 1778, at Larne, county Antrim. His father was by profession a surgeon, and in the discharge of his duty he caught a malignant fever, of which he died while yet a young man. His death left his family entirely unprovided for. The mother, however, was a woman of energy, and, removing to Belfast, she managed by her industry to educate and provide for her three children. Of these William Hamilton Drummond was the eldest. His first education he received at the Belfast Academy, and in his sixteenth year he entered the Glasgow University. While going through his course of studies here he was busy with original composition, and a poetical production 1 Quid times? &c. "The Man of the Age," almost brought him Lucretius; Trafalgar, a poem; and The Giant's Causeway. In 1810 he received from the University of Aberdeen the degree of Doctor of Divinity, owing to the representations of his friend Bishop Percy of Dromore. In 1815 he changed the scene of his labours to Strand Street, Dublin, where he had the advantage, not only of less burdensome ministerial duties, but also of a wider field for the exercise of his literary ability. He set down ardently to work, which was congenial to him, taking part in the polemical discussions of the time, and publishing a great number of essays and controversial sermons. Among his productions was an "Elegiac Ballad" on the death of the Princess Charlotte. He also wrote "Who are the Happy?" 1818; "Clontarf," a poem, 1822; "Bruce's Invasion of Ireland," 1826; an "Essay on the Doctrine of the Trinity;" "The Pleasures of Benevolence," 1835. The Autobiography of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, with additions, was published in 1840, and the Life of Michael Servetus, the Spanish Physician, in 1848. Dr. Drummond's nature was purely a religious one, and all his labours tended to the forwarding of what he believed to be the truth. He was also, like most of his educated countrymen, eminently patriotic. Of this there is proof in his Ancient Irish Minstrelsy, in which appear versified translations of over twenty poems relating to Fionn and his companions, the heroes of the Gaelic race. This work was published in 1852. Dr. Drummond was peculiarly happy in his domestic life. One of his sons, the Rev. Robert Blackley Drummond, is the author of Erasmus, his Life and Character, 2 vols. 1873; and the Where plummet never dropped, where thought ne'er strayed. Earth's vast foundations-wrecks of worlds unknown, By central shocks dismembered and o'erthrown. war O'er slaughtered hosts impel his ruthless car; And cursed Ambition, drunk with folly, plan The guilt, the crimes, and miseries of man! other, the Rev. James Drummond, M.A., pro- BENEVOLENCE OF THE GOOD MAN TO fessor of ecclesiastical history, has produced Spiritual Religion, and other works. Dr. Drummond died October 16, 1865, at the too seldom attained age of eighty-seven. A volume containing a number of sermons on general subjects, and also a poem entitled "The Preacher," has been published since his death. To this volume an interesting memoir by the Rev. J. Scott Porter is prefixed.] THE BED OF OCEAN. (FROM "THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY.") Amazing world! how vain the thoughts of man, Thy depths, thy terrors, and thy wealth to scan! Down, down unfathomably deep are laid, THE INFERIOR ANIMALS. What soil or clime, or barrier raised by pride, That people heaven, then downward to the worm, Murmur melodious, turn your burnished wings CUCHULLIN'S CHARIOT.1 (FROM " ANCIENT IRISH MINSTRELSY.") The car-light-moving I behold Or roebuck bounding fleet and light, The other steed of equal pace, Red lightning glances from his eye. In front, high-seated rides, With pliant will, and practised hand, All sparkling bright with gems and gold. GEORGE PETRIE, LL.D. BORN 1789-DIED 1866. [This distinguished antiquary and excellent | the Dublin Society, where he made rapid artist was born in Dublin in 1789. His father, progress; when he was but fifteen the silver James Petrie, was not only a noted portrait medal was awarded him for a group of figures painter, but a man of intellect and cultivation. he had designed and executed. When a boy George was sent to the school of When about nineteen years of age he began Mr. Whyte in Dublin, where so many of our to make excursions into the country to find illustrious countrymen took their first lessons-subjects for his pencil. These came plentinotably Sheridan and Moore. It was intended that young Petrie should become a surgeon, but he preferred to follow in his father's footsteps, and too wise to force his son's inclinations, his parent sent him to the drawing-school of 1 This poem is extracted from an Irish romance entitled Bristeach Mhuige Muirthemney-Breach of the Plain of Muirhebney. fully to his hand in the round towers, cromlechs, raths, ruined monasteries, &c., in which Ireland abounds. But Petrie was more than an artist. Endowed with the true spirit of an antiquarian, he did not content himself with merely sketching from this mine of treasures, but pushed his researches into the origin, history, and uses of these remains, and by his notes and observations he was able during these excursions to accumulate such valuable information as afterwards gained for him the reputation of an accomplished antiquary. His love of music also led him to collect, as he wandered through the cottages of the peasantry, the old national airs which, in the process of being handed down from father to son, were rapidly dying out before more flimsy and less worthy music of modern times. sons of Ferguson, O'Curry, Anster, Mangan, Aubrey de Vere, Carleton, and Wills. When the scheme of the Irish Ordnance Survey was abandoned, after one volume on the city of Londonderry and its vicinity had been published and much valuable historical and antiquarian material collected, Petrie returned once more to his brush as a means of support, but shortly afterwards a pension on the civil list relieved him from difficulty, and sufficed for his modest wants. The degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the Dublin University as a mark of the value of his labours. He continued his tours through Ireland, visiting occasionally Scotland and Wales, seeking everywhere subjects for pen and pencil, and adding bells, croziers, coins, &c., to the store of antiquities he had collected from an early period. This collection was purchased after his death by government, and now rests in the Royal Irish Academy. He was a proficient performer on the violin, and although appreciating the works of the Italian and German masters, he loved most the ancient and pathetic melodies of his native country; and the closing years of his life were devoted to their collection and to the arrangement of what he had already collected. He organized a society for the purpose, which ultimately published one volume and supplement, containing about one hundred and eighty-three airs, with curious and interesting annotations. He married in 1821, and settled down to the regular work of an artist; several of his large water-colour drawings, such as "Walks in Connemara," "Shruel Bridge," "Pilgrims at Clonmacnoise," "The Home of the Herons," "Dun Engus," "Gougane Barra," &c., appeared from time to time on the walls of the Royal Hibernian Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1826. He also contributed some landscapes to the Royal Academy in London. In 1830 he was chosen president of the Academy of his own county. It is from this period we must date his most important efforts to improve and put in order the antiquities, which he found in a state of neglect and decay. He adopted every means possible for carrying out this praiseworthy object. He succeeded in having a proper museum established; he assisted in the formation of a library, and he induced the purchase of ancient Irish manuscripts. He also contributed himself numerous and valuable papers on archæology, the principal among them being On the Origin and Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland, for which he gained a prize of £50 and a gold metal from the Royal Irish Academy. In 1832 he became editor of The Dublin Penny Journal, in connection with Cæsar Otway, Carleton's earliest patron, and in this his notes, sketches, and articles on the antiquities of Ireland were a marked and valuable feature. In 1833 he was employed to superintend the topographical department connected with the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. A staff of intelligent and learned men were placed at his disposal, among the number John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry. To his methodical training and intellectual culture were owing His friend Dr. William Stokes, a distinin a great measure the constant advance in guished medical practitioner of Dublin, pubantiquarian science, and the substitution of lished in 1869 his Life and Labours in Art true and well proven theory for the imaginary and Archaeology, and from this volume we hypotheses too frequently proposed without glean our principal facts. To his many accomthe preliminary trouble of investigating facts. plishments Dr. Petrie added the modesty and Petrie also edited The Irish Penny Journal refinement of a true-hearted gentleman. He during its brief existence, having around him is described as having a face handsome and as contributors a brilliant coterie in the per- | sensitive, with dark blue eyes and white hair; After a useful and happy life he died peacefully at his house, Rathmines, Dublin, 17th January, 1866. He was interred in Mount Jerome Cemetery. His great work, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland anterior to the Anglo-Norman Invasion-in which is included the essay already mentioned on "The Origin and Uses of the Round Towers"-was published in 1845. He also wrote a number of essays, which have never made their appearance in collected form. One lasting service which Dr. Petrie rendered the Irish Academy deserves to be specially recorded. In 1831 he secured for it a hitherto uncared-for and neglected autograph copy of the second part of the Annals of the Four Masters. his figure was slender and elegant, and his remarkably sweet kindly voice was just tinged with the brogue.] ANCIENT IRISH ECCLESIASTICAL REMAINS. (FROM "THE ROUND TOWERS." 1) "An opinion has long prevailed, chiefly countenanced by Mr. Somner, that the Saxon churches were mostly built with timber; and that the few they had of stone consisted only of upright walls, without pillars or arches; the construction of which it is pretended they were entirely ignorant of" (Grose). Yet this opinion is now universally acknowledged to be erroneous, and I trust I shall clearly prove that the generally adopted conclusion as to the recent date of our ecclesiastical stone buildings is erroneous also. It is by no means my wish to deny that the houses built by the Scotic race in Ireland were usually of wood, or that very many of the churches erected by that people, immediately after their conversion to Christianity, were not of the same perishable material. I have already proved these facts in my essay on the Ancient Military Architecture of Ireland anterior to the Anglo-Norman Conquest. But I have also shown in that essay that the earlier colonists in the country, the Firbolg and Tuatha De Danann tribes, which our historians bring hither from Greece at a very remote period, were accustomed to build, not only their fortresses, but even their dome-roofed houses and sepulchres, of stone without cement, and in the style now usually called Cyclopean and Pelasgic. I have also shown that this custom, as applied to their forts and houses, was continued in those parts of Ireland in which those ancient settlers remained, even after the introduction of Christianity, and, as I shall presently show, was adopted by the Christians in their religious structures. As characteristic examples of these ancient religious structures still remaining in sufficient preservation to show us perfectly what they had been in their original state, I may point to the monastic establishment of St. Molaise, on Inishmurry, in the bay of Sligo, erected in the sixth century; to that of St. Brendan, on Inishglory, off the coast of Erris, in the county of Mayo, erected in the beginning of the same century; and to By permission of Messrs. Hodges, Foster, and Co. that of St. Fechin, on Ard-Oilean, or High Island, off the coast of Connamara, in the county of Galway, erected in the seventh century. In all these establishments the churches alone, which are of the simplest construction, are built with lime cement. The houses or cells erected for the use of the abbot and monks are of a circular or oval form, having dome roofs, constructed like those of the ancient Greek and Irish sepulchres, without a knowledge of the principle of the arch, and without the use of cement; and the whole are encompassed by a broad wall composed of stones of great size, without cement of any kind. This Such also or very nearly appears to have been the monastic establishment constructed on the island of Farne, in Northumberland, in the year 684, by St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne, who is usually reputed to have been an Irishman, and, at all events, received his education from Irish ecclesiastics. monastery, as described by Venerable Bede in the seventeenth chapter of his Life of that distinguished saint, was almost of a round form, four or five perches in diameter from wall to wall. This wall was on the outside of the height of a man, but was on the inside made higher by sinking the natural rock, to prevent the thoughts from rambling by restraining the sight to the view of the heavens only. It was not formed of cut stone, or brick cemented with mortar, but wholly of rough stones and earth, which had been dug up from the middle of the inclosure; and of these stones, which had been carried from another place, some were so large that four men could scarcely lift one of them. Within the inclosure were two houses, of which one was an oratory or small chapel, and the other for the common uses of a habitation; and of these the walls were in great part formed by digging away the earth inside and outside, and the roofs were made of unhewn timber thatched with hay. Outside the inclosure, and at the entrance to the island, was a larger house for the accommodation of religious visitors, and not far from it a fountain of water. That these buildings were, as I have already stated, erected in the mode practised by the Firbolg and Tuatha De Danann tribes in Ireland, must be at once obvious to any one who has seen any of the Pagan circular stone forts and beehive-shaped houses, still so frequently to be met with along the remote coasts, and on the islands of the western and south-western parts of Ireland-into which little change of manners and customs had penetrated that |