prisoners or martyrs, as their countrymen call them—of the Bass, only two were Cameronians. The rest were ministers who were ready and willing to own and submit to the king's authority in all civil matters, but not in things spiritual. They denied the right of government to interfere in ecclesiastical concerns, and to compel Presbyterians to submit to prelatic authority. In the year 1662, four hundred ministers were ejected from their parishes for having refused compliance with an act of parliament which would have forced them to recognize prelatic principles against their consciences. These ejected ministers wandered about the country holding conventicles, or meetings for religious worship, &c., and were consequently denounced as "seditious persons and contemners of the royal authority." Most of our readers must be familiar with the dismal history of the persecutions they and their pious adherents underwent for many years. It was declared a capital crime, and in many instances punished as such, for ministers, or others, to hold conventicles either in a house or in a field. Numbers of ministers were seized and cast into dungeons in different localities; but we must merely mention those sent to the Bass, for it was with a view to convert that rock into a prison, whence escape was impossible, that it had been purchased by government. From the year 1676 to 1685, about forty prisoners-of whom all, except half-a-dozen, were ministers and preachers—were incarcerated in the prison of the Bass. Their periods of imprisonment varied from a few months to six years, and some of them died on the Bass. The most eminent of these martyrs," were John Blackadder, minister of Traquair; Alexander Peden, minister of Glenluce; John Dickson, minister of Rutherglen; and others, whose memory is yet cherished in the localities where they bore witness to what they deemed a righteous cause. There is ample and melancholy evidence that the prisoners on the Bass underwent terrible sufferings. Some of them were kept close prisoners in their dungeons, and the others could at any time be punished in like manner at the will of the governor. They had scanty and very meagre food, and even water was a necessity which they often longed for in vain, as they could only procure what fell from the clouds. The soldiers who guarded them were wicked and licentious troopers, who mocked the sufferings of the martyrs, and took pleasure in

insulting and adding to their misery. Tho last prisoner released from the Bass was John Spreul, who was liberated May 12th, 1687, having been confined to that desolate rock nearly six years.

After the revolution of 1688, the Bass obstinately held out for James II., and did not surrender until 1690, being the last place that clung to the desperate fortunes of the justly-exiled monarch. Yet it soon after was again seized by some daring adherents of the Stuart dynasty, who held it for several years in the name of King James; but in reality they were a set of reckless desperadoes, who converted the Bass into a mere pirates' stronghold, bidding defiance to all attempts to dispossess them of it. De Foe, rightly enough, terms them, a desperate crew of people," and he says, that, "having a large boat, which they hoisted up on the rock, or let down at pleasure, committed several piracies, took a great many vessels, and held out the last place in Great Britain for King James; but their boat being at last seized or lost, and not being supplied with provisions from France, as they used to be, they were obliged to surrender." It is related that they compelled every vessel that passed within reach of their cannon, to pay a species of black mail, or tribute money, and ships out of gunshot, were boarded and plundered by their boat. It was not until 1694 that they surrendered, being fairly blockaded and starved into submission, by a squadron of English men-of-war and small craft. This romantic episode, closes the history of the Bass as a fortified place, for King William prudently ordered the fortifications and buildings to be destroyed, and this was, by degrees, effectually done.

From a remote period, a warren of rabbits has been kept on the Bass, and to this day, a considerable colony of these prolific creatures burrow around the old ruins. There is also a space on the upper part of the rock, said to comprise seven acres, on which a limited number of sheep have always grazed. At present, upwards of a score find pasturage. The Bass belongs to the Dalrymple family, who acquired it from the crown a century and a half ago, and it has not been altogether a barren property in their hands, for they have always let it to tenants at a good rent. The chief profit of the tenant of the Bass is not derived from the sheep and rabbits, but from the gannets, or Solan geese, which frequent it in such prodigious numbers.

The

young gannets yield feathers, and their bodies are sold at prices varying from sixpence to a shilling each. An intelligent native of the neighbouring town of North Berwick, told us that these young geese are excellent eating, and so they were undoubtedly once esteemed, for they formerly sold for nearly double their present price; but we are more fastidious than our ancestors were in the kind and quality of their food, and we hold the Solan goose in slight esteem, on account of its oily, fishy flavour, and would recommend the purchaser of one to cook it in the open air, unless his olfactory nerves are the reverse of sensitive.

It was formerly supposed that the Solan goose, or gannet, bred only on the Bass, and on Ailsa Craig at the mouth of the Clyde; but it is now known that an immense number frequent St. Kilda, the outermost of the Hebrides, and that small colonies exist at one or two places on the coasts of England and of Ireland. The Solan goose is nearly the size of the common domestic goose, snow-white, excepting the pinion feathers of their wings. They have broad-webbed feet, and a most remarkablelooking head, the eyes heing very large and surrounded by dark streaks, the beak long and sharp-pointed, and the mouth extremely wide. They make their nests of seaweed, or grass, or any substance that is available, and lay but one egg at a time. During the period of incubation they are so tame that they will permit themselves to be touched. Their food, of course, is fish, especially the herring. They cannot dive in pursuit of prey when they are themselves floating on the surface of the water; but when they are soaring in the air they dart downwards with great velocity, and the impetus of the descent forces them to the required depth, and they never fail to secure the fish they aim at. The number of Solan geese attached to the Bass is supposed to be less than of yore; nor is this to be marvelled at when the numbers of young annually killed are taken into consideration. But even at this day he would be a bold man, and an excellent calculator, who would engage to estimate them within a few thousands, more or less, of the actual number, whatever that may be.

Several other species of birds also fre

quent the Bass, particularly the Guillemot, or Scout; the Kittiwake; the Razor-bill; and several kinds of gulls. Some of these birds are numerous; others are only seen occasionally. Land birds, also, as the raven, jackdaw, and hooded-crow, find congenial roosting places amid the ruins and in the clefts of the rock.

We

No description would convey an adequate idea of the extraordinary spectacle afforded by the evolutions of the countless birds, that hover around the stern old Bass. shall, however, conclude by quoting the following remarks on the subject, from Mr. Hugh Miller's article on its Geology, contained in the work entitled, " "The Bass Rock," which is the joint production of five writers, each eminent in his special department of literature and science. innumerable birds," says Mr. Miller, "that frequent the rock, find there perilous, mid-air platforms on which they rear their young. At the time of my former visit, to borrow from old Dunbar,—

"The air was dirkit with the fowlis,

The

That cam with yammeris and with yowlis,
With shrykking, schreeking, skrymming, scowlis,
And meikle noyis and showtes."

I was

But all was silent to day not sufficiently aware, during my previous visit, how very much the birds add to the rock scenery of the island. The gannet measures from wing-tip to wing-tip full six feet; the great black gull, five; the blue, or herring gull, about four feet nine inches; and, flying at all heights along the precipices, thick as motes in the sunbeam, this one, so immediately over head that the well defined shadow which it casts darkens half the yawl below; that other, well nigh four hundred feet in the air, though still under the level of the summit,—they serve by their gradations of size, from where they seem mere specks in the firmament, to where they exhibit, almost within staff reach, their amplest development of bulk, as objects to measure the altitudes by."

* Some of the information conveyed in this article we have derived from the valuable work alluded to. It is beyond comparison the most complete, authentic, and interesting account of the Bass ever published, and may be said to exhaust the subject.

PREFACE.

THERE are names whose sounds reveal the most beautiful efforts of humanity; they address our souls more eloquently than the most skilful speech. In the name of a great man a thought is vivified within us, whose expression is the embodiment of his character, whose description is his life and deeds, what language is too poor to embrace in one of her terms, what she is scarcely able to articulate in abstraction, that echoes powerfully and vividly within us out of such a name thus the name of Aristotle presents again the whole of classic Greece in its intrinsic worth; the name of Caesar calls the whole greatness of the Roman character, and the name of Humboldt means the most comprehensive embodiment of all the sciences and virtues.

If the scientific men of all nations and of every country were in our times to elect a sovereign, the crown and the sceptre of intelligence could, by right, be conferred on no one but Alexander von Humboldt.

He is not entitled to this dignity and distinction because the mightiest genius, the most celebrated name, and the most undisputed originality are awarded him, but because there exists no other who could lay claim to equal universality, or who could bring into account an equal number of the most varied laurels than he-the scientific discover of the New continent, the Columbus of the nineteenth century, the author of the Kosmos.

Humboldt is the most extraordinary personification of the most universal, all embracing genius. His accomplishments will stand in the annals of the history of science as a memorable example of what a single man may do. Whether we contemplate him as an analyzing chemist or comparative anatomist, as natural philosopher or zoologist, as botanist or astronomer, as miner or mathematician, as philologist or geographer, as geologist or ethnographist, as spirited expositor and narrator, as calculator, statist, anl compiler, we find him mastering and enriching all these sciences.

Humboldt combines in a hitherto unexampled degree the most opposite characteristics and capacities; by the side of infi

nite aspirations, combining philosophical abstraction, is the most scrupulous devotion to the minutest observation of empirics,by the side of the most sterile, numerical schematism, he is the most eloquent, imaginative author, besides the most penetrating research after the phenomena of the anterior and primitive world, he has a thorough knowledge of the present. As the sciences owe to him their most important extensions, so is art indebted to his poetic glance, to his graphic and vivid language. Humboldt combines the solemn greatness of severe science with the pleasing charms of the fine arts; the fund of his knowledge, the importance of his performances, the warmth of his description, fill with wonder, inspire with admiration.

Humboldt knows this globe like his own chamber; he has examined and explored it everywhere and in every direction, above and below, from east to west, from the equator to each pole, the land and the ocean, the whole organic, as the whole inorganic world; he saw everything with an acute glance, he embraced all things by means of a ruling genius. He stood on the heights of the Cordillera and the Altai; he wandered in the savannahs of America and the "steppes" of Asia; he explored the gold mines of New Granada and those of Siberia; -from the depths of the fathomless ocean to the nebulous constellation of the Milky Way, every realm and every sphere of nature is exposed to his mind's eye. Thus he became the most powerful mainspring which has kept in motion, for more than half a century, all studies of natural history, and the centre which attracted every observation, discovery, and scientific result, to be classified and disposed by his master mind.

Most appropriate was, therefore, the application to him of the description of Apollo :Illustrans totum radiis splendentibur orbem.

His genius illumines the most distant science, and concentrates into one focus her most scattered rays. Notwithstanding all this, he frequently ascends to the poetic. Thus the two little volumes, "Opinions of Nature," (Ansichten der Natur), written in pure descriptive prose, are inspired and per

This universality is, however, one of the most essential requisites in a sovereign of science. We did not in the past grant the palm of knowledge to one who, like Newton, has penetrated into the profoundest depths of his department, but to Leibnitz, whose investigations and studies drew around him ever enlarging circles, like those caused by a stone thrown into the water.

In a word, that genius which concentrates within itself the greatest number and variety of the scattered rays of knowledge, and like a central sun shines over all, is the highest dignitary, the prince of intelligence; and not he who reflects the rays of a single science, however brilliant or penetrating; nor is it alone the multifariousness, abundance, and depth of knowledge; not the fidelity and grace of his delineation, its symmetrical, artistic harmony; nor yet the creative, methodizing mind; nor the divining power of combination, which give to Alexander von Humboldt his imperishable worth. It is his unusually powerful instinct of moral perception; his unassuming love of truth; his benevolent, humane temperament,-which irresistibly occupy the mind and satisfy the heart.

Humboldt is now in the eighty-seventh year of his age: he has arrived, according to the ordinary measure of time allotted to man's existence, at an advanced hour of the evening, before the approach of night; already is the power and elasticity of his frame relaxed, and the vital cement which holds together the scaffolding of his body has.

become brittle and tender; but he still retains unimpaired all the powers of his imperishable mind. He still works night and day on his world-renowned book, the "Kosmos." Hence, wherever the sound of European science has penetrated, there is Humboldt admired and honoured, as the Nestor and patriarch of knowledge, and, what is still more, as the high priest of humanity.

A biography of Alexander von Humboldt, written by the right man, would prove a treasure to the literature of the world; but the probability of such a work is still very remote. He who wishes to write a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, ought at least to be able to write the "Kosmos."

The author of the following sketches offers in them to the indulgent reader only elements of fragmentary stu lies to a biography of the honoured individual; he presents them in the same sense as a draughtsman presents his studies of hands, feet, or eyes, which, although only parts of the beauty of the whole human frame, have, nevertheless, also as such, a distinctive interest.

The author hopes to escape the reproach of presumption, partly from the circumstance that these papers have been written with the love and inspiration which has for many years been daily renewed in the vicinity of the revered old man, and partly because he is privileged in being permitted the use of authentic documents and letters which have, until now, remained unknown. This enables him to form some new opinions about the progress of Humboldt's mental development, and to rectify former erroneous impressions.

The necessarily limited space which is allotted to these contributions must, at the same time, plead as an excuse for incompleteness in the execution of some parts.

In conclusion, we would observe, that as genial minds feel an equal pleasure in contemplating that which is in progress of being with that which already exists—the bud as the fruit-so must the history of the childhood and youth of so great a man afford an equal if not a greater interest than that of his riper manhood; we, therefore, commence with pictures out of the years of Humboldt's childhood.