what year marked the foundation-stone; what force formed each cylinder, and joined in uniform contact such irregular masses? The toil of many a lifetime has been spent on far meaner designs, and proud wealth has gloried in much less wonderful relics of man's invention.

ONLY imagine yourself, says a writer in the Jour- | luntarily to what great artist your praise is due ; nal of Commerce, in a little row-boat, passing around the northern coast of Ireland. In the distance, you seem to look upon an immense castle, flanked by double rows of cylindrical columns. It seems so fortress-like, this massive structure rising from the depths of the sea, that you expect to find guards and wardens, soldiery and arms; but as you approach nearer it loses that castellated appearance, and gradually lessons in magnitude until there remains only a huge stone wall, extending around the coast for miles. It is composed of gigantic pillars, cut into prisms, three-sided, five-sided, eight-sided-side fitting to side-variously jointed, joint corresponding to joint, innumerable irregularities conformed into such beautiful regularity, that you are struck with awe at so perfect a monument of skill, and ask invo

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

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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 soli-
tude too desolate for aught save the cawing of rooks,
and the twittering of swallows.

The average height of the basaltic columns con-
stituting the Giant's Causeway is thirty feet; but the
whole neighborhood is strewn with detached frag-
ments of the same species of rock, that in their pic-
turesque 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 tesselated pave-
ment, 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 ha-
rangues of the numerous barefooted urchins that fol-
low you all the way along the shore, offering them-
selves 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 and crannies that the giant once ruled. From mornlearned is comprised in wild legends about the stones ing 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 other remarkable relics, "the very last" of which Bowl," "his honor's walking-stick," and various 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."

dead, and their mother is poor; and in the grief of The little ragamuffins tell you that their father is your heart you buy, and buy, and buy, until you have no more money to pay, and no more hands to and hearing new tales continually, the plot thickens carry their useless pebbles; and finding new faces, so unmercifully, that you cease to believe any thing, because you have believed so much, and in selfpile that owns no mason-from the old arm-chair defense are forced to turn away from the masonic 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 way, in spite of its nonsensical traditions and its so real an illusion. But a sight of the Giant's Causefabulous legends, is a commentary too impressive great Creator. And long years hence it will stand, ever to be forgotten, on the power and might of its 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.

Broussais, or in the published certificates of the efficacy of Perkins' metallic tractors, or somebody's galvanic rings, or anybody's sarsaparilla syrup, or in Kossuth's theory of intervention, or in the editorial predictions printed in the daily newspapers; but the members of the Society in question battle for Truth which is truth, and not for the flimsy dictum of men. They seek to ascertain the facts of the Creation, and the yet hidden causes which bind them together in relations of eternal harmony and peace. They seek in the atmosphere for signs to lead to the comprehension of the laws which regulate its movements; they study the vegetable growths of forest and field to learn how to increase the products of the soil; they inquire into the nature and habits and structure of the living inhabitants of the air, the earth, and the seas, to know the best and easiest modes of rendering them profitable to society; they dive beneath the surface of the land, and drag to light the buried re

IT has been frequently said the building at the north-west corner of Broad and George streets looks poverty caste, that is, its external indications lead to a suspicion it is of a poor family, while if it were rough-caste it would have such a tidy, smart look, that no mere passer-by would suspect there are any poor relations connected with it. That edifice is a small arena where a few courageous men do battle for TRUTH. Were they to consent to rough-caste, or stucco, or plaster over the unsightly surface of their street fronts, while they are in debt, they would make a false show to the public which would be altogether inconsistent with the object of the Society to which that edifice belongs. The object of that Society is to ascertain the TRUTH, and to point it out to the human race, beginning of course with citizens of Philadelphia. It must not be imagined, reader, gentle or fair or both, that the Society to which the rough brick walls alluded to belongs, is engaged in any fanciful or visionary or transcendental occupa-mains of those animals which dwelt on earth counttion It does not spend time in listening to testimony or seeking evidence of TRUTH of the kind asserted to exist in the doctrines of Hanneman, of Preisnitz, of

less years before man made any mark of his presence in the universe, indeed before he had existence: and in that building they bring together, under one