West Minster, beneath Spenser's simple tomb! We saw how Ariosto, in his allegory, dealt with the holiest names in a thoroughly pagan spirit. We have now seen Spenser produce one far nobler by an ex ried beauty, that "the creature" has been "made subject to vanity," and also Nature's augury of the fulfilment of the "hope" in which it was so subjected, were designed to be echoed in clearer strains in the succeeding canto. These two stan-actly reversed process. From its proposed zas were intended to commence it: ; I. "When I bethink me on that speech whylear, And love of things so vain to cast away; Short Time shall soon cnt down with his consuming sickle. II. "Then 'gin I think on that which Nature said But steadfast rest of all things firmly stayed O that great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that And with these two stanzas a mightier will than ours has chosen that Spenser's great work should end. They are to us the last of the Fairy Queen.' subject, we might have expected only to find in it the commonplaces of heathen poets on the changeful and disappointing character of earthly things, cast by genius into a new and striking shape. But Spenser is not content with doing this; nor does he cease "until he has let in a radiance borrowed from revelation upon the ever-shifting forms and ruins of Time. Ariosto lays the foundations of his allegory in the heaven of heavens, and yet does not succeed in producing any religious impression on his reader's mind. Spenser lays his on the fabled Olympus, but stays not till, having extracted deep truths from the lips of its inhabitants, he can end it by echoing the lofty strains in which prophets and apostles bid us look forward to "the rest which remaineth for the people of God." And how noble these two concluding stanzas are in themselves! Could even Spenser's genius have devised a fitter close of the first over the fleeting nature of earthfor his great poem? How well the lament ly joys (uttered doubtless from the bitter depths of its author's own experience) befits the last lines of a poem which has all along treated "the glories of our birth and state' as "shadows" of better and more "substantial things" than themselves! And how magnificent is the Sursum Corda of the second! composed, it might seem, fresh from the perusal of St. Augustine's noble commentary on the opening verses of the second chapter of Genesis. How does it stir our hearts by its solemn harmonies, as it calls us to avert our eyes from the fading glories of earth, that we may fix them steadfastly on the brightening splendours of "the day of restitution of all things!" My extracts from this greatest of Spenser's allegories have been necessarily brief. To do it justice, it should be read as a whole. It is throughout magnificent; almost Homeric in its combined sublimity and simplicity. Its wealth of imaginative riches is, even for Spenser, astonishing; doubly so, when we recollect the prodigal variety of the descriptions he has scattered with lavish Thinking of these two stanzas, and of all hand through the preceding books. The the others which have been, like them, witgerm of one of the grandest things in the nessing to us the religious superiority of English language, Milton's Death, is dis- Spenser's England over Ariosto's Italy. cernible in the 46th stanza, so sublime in who would not earnestly hope that they its spectral terrors. - Above all, how marked express, not alone the faith of the age in is the contrast between this allegory and which their writer flourished, but the unAriosto's! Who can compare the two feigned confession also of the faith which without feeling convinced that if the dust filled his own heart? that so his Master, which now sleeps in the Benedictine Church cutting short his beautiful poem at the line at Ferrara once enshrined the richest fancy in which he so earnestly supplicates a share that ever endowed a poet, a yet deeper in the true rest of the people of God, may sense of beauty thrilled the brain, and far seem to have signified His gracious acceptnobler pulsations stirred the heart, whicance of his prayer, by reserving it for Himlie awaiting the resurrection in our great self to add unto it the last Amen so be it. From Blackwood's Magazine. A VISIT TO THE BIG TREES. the lowest swells of the Sierra Nevada, and entered a country less luxuriantly fertile than the Stockton Valley, and met with numerous monuments of the old "placer" diggings in the shape of flumes," or wooden aqueducts for bringing water to the mines, and flats where thickly-massed boulders of granite and quartz, uncovered by the miner's work, told of streams which ran there in times gone by, and brought down the golden gravel discovered in the ancient bed. As night closed in we passed through the town of Sonora, and six miles more brought us to Columbia, where we stayed the night at a rough hotel, kept by a Welshman named Morgan. As the stage did not run beyond this, we hired a buggy and pair and drove over to " Murphy's," a mining town thirteen miles distant, and thenceforward through a picturesque hilly country, where grew in scattered clusters many species of pine, the arbutus, and white jessamine, with evergreen oaks, whose boughs bore numerous branches of mistletoe. The road wound higher and higher up the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and at dusk we reached the valley of the Mammoth Tree Grove, 4000 feet above the sea. The weather continued fine and the sky cloudless, but at this height the evening air was sharp and frosty, and a thin carpet of snow covered the ground. After a short drive through a forest of lofty pines, we came in sight of the hotel; and 100 yards in front of it, guard WE were in San Francisco, the Golden City of California, the paradise of North Pacificans, and there were many wonders to be seen gold and silver mines, where hundreds of tons of quartz rock are crushed daily, and millions of dollars extracted yearly; the cinnabar mine of New Almaden, which supplies quicksilver to the whole world; Yo Semite, the loveliest of valleys, where, amongst the grand mountains of the Sierra Nevada, a river leaps down from a height of 2700 feet, and forms the waterfall of the Bridal Veil, the highest in the world. There were geysers, caves, the islands of the sea-lions, and the "Mammoth Trees;" there was a Russian fleet in the harbour, "the Beautiful Menkin" at the Theatre, and the "Living Skeleton" at the Museum. We were fairly bewildered by the multiplicity of strange sights awaiting our curious eyes, uncertain which to choose. After mature deliberation, we decided to bend our steps in the first place to the Mammoth Tree Grove, in Calaveras county, about 150 miles east of San Francisco, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. We went on board the Cornelia, accordingly, one evening, and steamed all night up the San Joaquin, a tributary of the Sacramento -a narrow muddy stream, running in a most tortuous channel through an extensive marshy delta. The tall reeds which covered the flat ex-ing on each side the entrance to its grounds, panse were on fire for miles, almost to the water's edge, and we made our way through a sea of flame and smoke,the whole country being lighted up by the vast conflagration. At eight o'clock the following morning we reached Stockton city, and then took the stage-wagon for Columbia, fifty-eight miles distant, and thirteen from the Big Tree Valley. The first portion of the road lay along a broad rich valley, brought almost entirely under the plough, where the undisturbed stubbles told of a fertility unknown in the Old World; for so generous is the soil, that luxuriant crops spring up in the second year without the labour of man, the grain shaken out in the gathering of the first harvest being sufficient for the succeeding one, a "volunteer crop." Although it was past mid-winter- the end of January | the weather was bright and warm as the most genial May; rows of oleanders and heliotropes bloomed in the gardens, ignorant of wintry cold, and strawberries ripened on the sunniest slopes. Towards evening we began to ascend THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. grew two of the giant trees. These, named The Sentinels." although by no means the largest, are very handsome, and of sufficient magnitude to strike the stranger with astonishment, for their height is over 300 feet, and their diameter about 20 feet. At Sperry & Perry's hotel at Murphy's, where we had dined, we had been informed that the hotel at the Mammoth Tree Grove, also kept by Sperry & Perry, or Perry & Sperry, was closed for the winter; but Mr. Sperry or Mr. Perry (it is impossible to say which) kindly offered to accompany us and open the house for our accommodation, and we carried him along with us in our buggy. It was sunset when we got in, and Sperry or Perry hastened to prepare supper, whilst we had a look in the twilight at The Sentinels and the "Big Tree," so called par excellence, although it is not the greatest amongst the giants. Its huge trunk now lies mutilated on the ground, having been felled a few years ago, as we were told, to furnish material for walking-sticks, which were eagerly bought by curiosity-hunters. 1484. the botanists sorely. Some declared them to be a species of cedar, which they certainly closely resemble; others, again, considered them to be of the family of the Taxodia; while Professor Lindley doubted whether a new order would not have to be made for them; and it still appears undecided to what order they properly belong. The seed has been largely exported, and young Wellingtonias may be seen gracing many an English lawn. Yet, strange to say, although the seed grows readily, and the trees flourish with rich luxuriance wherever they have been planted, both here and in America, they are, in the natural order of things, limited to two tiny valleys about fifty miles apart. Not a single tree of the kind, except those which have been lately planted by the hand of man, is known to exist out of the Calaveras and Mariposa valleys. They have never spread from their quiet nooks in the Sierra Nevada, and have remained hidden in its recesses for hundreds, perchance thousands, of years, until discovered in the manner related. Five men were set to work on it, and it lingtonia gigantea by Englishmen, puzzled took them twenty-five days to accomplish the task! It was hopeless to attempt to cut it down with axes, and it was therefore bored with augers, and the intermediate spaces sawn through, and, finally, a wedge and battering-ram were required to effect the fall of the severed trunk, which stood firmly perpendicular when completely cut through. The stump measures 96 feet in circumference at the base; and the top, cut smooth and even, is 25 feet in diameter, without reckoning the bark, which is about 3 feet more. Upon it is built a round wooden house a ball-room it is called; and a circular room nearly 10 yards in diameter is no mean dancing saloon. It is said that thirty-two people have danced here in four different sets at the same time, and theatrical performances have been given on the expansive top of this wonderful stump. Near the stump lies a section of the trunk; and some idea of the size of this may be gained from the fact that the writer, a man of 5 ft. 11 in., could barely touch the centre at the smaller end, standing on tiptoe, while at the larger he could in the same manner touch a point about onethird of the whole diameter. The rest of the vast fallen trunk, 302 feet long, had been dressed level, and seemed like a broad terrace-walk, with two bowling alleys made on it side by side. The amount of timber in this tree is calculated at 500,000 cubic feet! and its age estimated from the annual rings at 3000 years! Before we had sufficiently inspected and wondered at the Big Tree it became dark, and we entered the hotel, where Mr. Sperry or Perry had supper ready for us, and in the evening told us the history of the Great Trees. They were not discovered until the year 1850, when a Mr. Dowd, who was out hunting, was led by a herd of deer which he was following into the Big Tree Valley. He stopped as one enchanted, feeling like Gulliver when lost in the field of barley in Brobdignag the deer were forgotten, and he gazed with utter astonishment on monsters of vegetation such as he had never even dreamed of as existing in the world. He told his companions of his adventure on his return, but all laughed at his story as a barefaced attempt to impose upon their credulity; and it was with the greatest difficulty he succeeded in inducing some of them to accompany him to the spot, and verify his statements by actual inspection and measurement. The newly-discovered trees, called Washingtonia gigantea by Americans, and Wel We turned out early next morning into the fresh frosty air, and after breakfast wandered about the grove for several hours, amid a scene of wonders, the mere description of which we should have laughed at as a traveller's tale. There are about one hundred trees of this species, of every age and size, intermingled with various kinds of pines, yews, and deciduous shrubs, and all standing within an area of about fifty acres. The younger ones are singularly graceful and handsome, but those of mature growth -a few thousand years old perhaps — are a little withered at the top. The enormous trunks are bare and branchless for from 100 to 130 feet, and the boughs seem small in proportion to the central stem. The effect of the mighty columns rising thickly round, and towering on high, some burnt hollow, in whose cavities a company of soldiers might almost find shelter; others uninjured, solid and massive, the largest and the oldest of living organisms on earth, monuments of ages past, when there were giants in the land, is almost awesome. The great sugar-pines of 300 feet high, and 10 or 12 feet diameter, kings of the forest elsewhere, seemed mere dwarfs beside those Wellingtonias; and as we walked about, pigmy and insignificant, we half expected to see the strange forms of extinct giants of the animal world, the mammoth or the mastodon of ages still more remote, come crashing through the timber, or the pterodactyl wing- of the "Father of the Forest ;" and numer ing its way amongst the colossal vegetation. ous large trees have been overthrown or There stood the "Mother of the Forest," broken off by it when it crashed to the withered and bare, her full height 327 feet, ground. 300 feet from the root it snapped her girth 78 feet without the bark, for this in two, and the upper portion of it has had been removed from 116 feet of the decayed away, and almost all trace of it lower portion of the trunk, and the scaffold- has disappeared; but at the point of fracture, ing erected for the purpose still stood round or 200 feet from the base, its circumference the tree. This outer shell thus removed is 54 feet (18 feet diameter). According, is now put up, we believe, in the Crystal therefore, to the average taper of the other Palace at Sydenham. Thus the two finest trees, the unbroken stem must have been at trees growing when the forest was first dis- least 435 feet high more than twice the covered have both been wantonly de- height of the Monument, 95 feet higher stroyed for the gratification of curiosity- than the great chimney at Saltaire, and lovers. There is, however, a still greater 30 feet higher than the top of the cross than these, decayed and fallen - a stupen- which crowns the dome of St. Paul's dous ruin lying half-buried in the ground. Cathedral! It appears to have been destroyed by the fire which has evidently devastated the grove years ago, for many of the standing trees are partially charred, and this one has been burnt into a hollow shell. At the base its girth is 112 feet, and we walked inside the tnnnel through the trunk for 200 feet with our hats on. Great must have been the fall The fresh ripe cones of the Wellingtonias strewed the ground, and of these we gathered a plentiful stock; and then, having sufficiently gratified our curiosity, we took to our buggy once more, and on the following day regained that luxurious city San Francisco. PART XII. CHAPTER XLI. THE result of Miss Marjoribanks's wise precaution and reticence was that Sir John Richmond and the Doctor and Colonel Chiley were all on Mr. Ashburton's committee. They might not agree with his principles; but then when a man does not state any very distinct principles, it is difficult for any one, however well disposed, to disagree with him; and the fact that he was the man for Carlingford was so indisputable, that nobody attempted to go into the minor matters. "Mr. Ashburton is a gentleman known to us all," Sir John said, with great effect, in his nomination speech; and it was a sentence which went to the hearts of his audience. The other candidate had been a long time from home, and it was longer still since anybody in Carlingford could be said to have been benefited by his residence there. He had had all his things down from town, as Mr. Holden, the upholsterer, pithily remarked- and that made a great difference to start with. As for Mr. Ashburton, though it is true nobody knew what he thought about Reform or the Income Tax, everybody knew that he lived at the Firs, and was supplied in a creditable way by George Street tradesmen. There was no mystery whatever about him. People knew how much he had a-year, and how much he paid for everything, and the way in which his accounts were kept, and all about him. Even when he had his wine direct from the growers (for naturally his own county could not supply the actual liquor), it was put in Carlingford bottles, and people knew the kinds he had, and how much, and a hundred agreeable details. And then, he was a gentleman as was always ready to give his advice," as some of the people said. All this furnished an immense body of evidence in his favour, and made Sir John's remark eloquent. And then Carlingford, as a general rule, did not care the least in the world about Reform. There were a few people who had once done so, and it was remarked in Grove Street that Mr. Tozer had once been in a dreadful state of mind about it. But he was quite tranquil on the subject now, and so was the community in general. And what was really wanted, as Lucilla's genius had seen at a glance, was not this or that opinion, but a good man. But at the same time it would be vain to deny that Miss Marjoribanks looked forward to a possible visit from Mr Cavendish with a certain amount of anxiety. She was not frightened, for she knew her own powers; but she was a little excited and stimulated by the idea that he might come in at any minute, bringing back a crowd of recollections with him; and it was a perpetual wonder to her how he would take the inevitable difference, whether he would accept it as natural, or put on the airs of an injured man. Lucilla did not go out the two afternoons after her meeting with Mrs. Woodburn, partly that she might not miss him if he called for it was better to have it over; but Mr. Cavendish did not come on either of these days. After that, of course, she did not wait for him any longer. But on the third or fourth day, when she was in Miss Brown's photographing room (the eldest Miss Brown was not married, and was a mother to the younger girls, and always enthusiastic about sitters), Mr. Ashburton called about business, and Thomas came to fetch Miss Marjoribanks. She was sitting with the greatest good-nature for half-adozen pictures, knowing in her secret heart all the time that she would look a perfect fright, and that all Carlingford would see her grinning with imbecile amiability out of the hazy background of Miss Brown's Cartes. Lucilla knew this, and had hitherto avoided the process with success; but now she gave in; and as the Major was there, of course they talked of the coming election, which, indeed, at present was almost the only topic of conversation in Grange Lane. "Of course, you are on Mr. Ashburton's committee," said Lucilla; " you must be, or going to be, after what you said the other day at lunch "What did I say?" asked Major Brown, with an air of dismay; for to tell the truth, his heart inclined a little towards poor Mr. Cavendish, who was an old neighbour, and to whom Major Brown could not but think the Marjoribanks and others had behaved rather cruelly. But then in these electioneering matters one never knows what one may have done to compromise one's self without meaning it; and the Major was a little anxious to find out what he had said. "Dear Major Brown," said Lucilla, seriously, "I am so sorry if you did not mean it. I am sure it was that as much as anything that influenced Mr. Ashburton. He was turning it all over in his mind, you know, and was afraid the people he most esteemed in Carlingford would not agree with him, and did not know what to do; and then you said, What did it matter about opinions, if it was a good man?-that was what decided him," said Miss Marjoribanks, with sad yet gentle reproachfulness. "I am so sorry if you did not mean what you said |
