PART II.--_Semichorus.

7. O gates, lift up your heads, And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, And let the King of Glory enter.

A SINGLE VOICE.

8. Who is He, this King of Glory?

ANOTHER VOICE.

Jehovah, strong and mighty; Jehovah, mighty in battle.

_Semichorus._

9. O you gates, lift up your heads, And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, And let the King of Glory enter.

A SINGLE VOICE.

10. Who is He, this King of Glory?

_Grand Chorus._

Jehovah of Hosts. He is the King of Glory.

_26th._--This is the last day of our Elmore friends, the Miss Maudes’ visit; fortunately it has been very fine, for they wished to walk through the forest; and we did ramble very far. We took them to visit the blind basket-maker and the Franklins, and shewed them all the improvements that my uncle had made in the cottage; and we came home by a round-about way through an oak coppice, in which there are nice glades and pretty paths. In one of these glades there was an immense pile of oak bark; and Miss Maude told me that in May it is peeled off the young trees which are cut down in thinning the wood, and is piled up in stacks to dry, till the latter end of Autumn, when it is disposed of by weight. For this purpose there was a huge pair of scales, set up near the stack, and on this very day they began to take it down, to weigh it, and pack it in large mats, made of a kind of _bent_ grass, in which it is sewed up, and sold to the tanners at a very high price. The different groups, some weighing, some packing, and others taking it away on drays, made a very lively scene--and Miss Maude and I each made a sketch of it.

While we were drawing, she asked me several questions about the Brazilian forests, and I endeavoured to describe to her the richness of foliage, and the majestic height of the trees, to which none here can be compared. I did not forget the great variety in our Brazil woods, where almost every tree was different from that next to it, while here, there are not more than four or five species, which you meet again and again. Nor did I omit to mention how beautifully they are ornamented, by twining and parasite plants, and yet not rendered impassable; for I repeated what I had heard a gentleman at Rio say, that such is the regularity of those great forests, that he could gallop for miles through them, without being stopped by underwood.

Both she and her sister were very much interested in the account I gave of the _silk cotton_ trees, which spread out all their branches at such a height from the ground; and of the _lecythis_, with its pitcher-shaped fruit, and of the _jacaranda_, with its large feathered leaves of dark green, which make such a contrast with its gold-coloured flowers, some species of it so very tall and magnificent, and others with such singular tufts of whitish leaves at the ends of the branches.

They encouraged me to go on, and after describing how the dark tops of the Chilian fir mingle with all these other trees, I came to the humbler shrubs and flowers, which exhibit such a wonderful variety of tints, and then to the festoons of those twining plants, called _lianes_, which descend from the tops of the highest trees, or twist round the strongest trunks, till they gradually kill them.

Though many trees grow to great size here, there is certainly not that profusion of vegetation which you used to make me notice at Brazil; and there is a gravity in these English woods, which I told them is very different from the gay and flowery appearance of the woods, and even of the road-sides, in Brazil, where the hedges of myrtle, china roses, scarlet passion-flowers, and trumpet flowers, make so gay a mixture. The autumn tints, so much admired here, are perfectly dead, compared to those of South America.

I described, also, our plains or _campas_, with the humming-birds buzzing like bees round the flowering shrubs, and the myriads of gay butterflies, fluttering over the streams. How astonished these Gloucestershire people would be, if they were to see the troops of _emus_ or American ostriches, which run with the swiftness of horses through the bushes, accompanied by their young!

Insignificant, however, as the forest of Deane appears to me, I find that it once chiefly supplied the British navy; and was considered of so much importance, that one of the special instructions to the Admiral of the Spanish Armada, was to destroy it.

_27th._--We had another boating party to-day, to take the Miss Maudes home. The river was quite alive, so many trading vessels were going up. The coal mines and iron works in this neighbourhood employ a great deal of shipping, and the city of Gloucester is, besides, a place of considerable business.

As we boated along that part where the river makes a sudden horseshoe bend, and skirts the forest so beautifully, the woodland scenery naturally became the subject of conversation; and my uncle, after smiling at some of my rhapsodies about “the magnificent trees of Brazil,” told us, that a friend of his who has been in New South Wales, had described the appearance of the forests there, as very peculiar. From the scarcity of deciduous trees, there is, he says, a tiresome sameness in the woods; the white cedar being almost the only one that is not evergreen, in that extensive country; and besides, they have, in general, a disagreeable grey or silvery appearance. One of the most common trees there, is the _eucalyptus_, with white bark, and a scanty foliage, which is more like bits of tin, than leaves; and no painter, he said, could make a picturesque view of any scene there, because the trees have no lateral boughs, and, therefore, cast no masses of shade. He says, the Australian forests have all a very peculiar character, owing to the manner in which the two species that compose at least one-half of the forests, turn their leaves to the light. These trees are the acacia, and the eucalyptus; their leaves hang edgeways from the branches, and both the surfaces of the leaf being thus equally presented to the light, there is scarcely any difference between the front and the back.

New South Wales, he says, is a perpetual flower-garden; and in point of size, the trees are not surpassed by those of any quarter of the globe. Amongst others, he mentioned the cabbage palm, which rises sometimes one hundred feet above the rest of the forest; and another palm called the _seaforthia elegans_, equal in size to the cabbage tree, but with pinnate leaves like those of the cocoa nut. From the broad membranous spatha of the flowers, the natives make water-buckets, by tying up each end, just as they make their bark canoes. The farmers use them for milk-pails; and of the leaves, both hats and thatch are made; so that, altogether, this _seaforthia_ seems as useful as it is elegant.

The Miss Maudes having alluded to the description I had given them yesterday of the difference between the woods in England and Brazil, my uncle said, that young people did well to make such observations, and to acquire a general idea of the productions that characterize the great divisions of the globe. He added, that on all subjects of natural history it is not enough to amuse ourselves with details, or to accumulate mere facts, however valuable,--they should be classed in our minds; we then perceive the leading distinctions, and we become able to trace every new fact up to some general cause. This, he says, may be called gaining a sort of double knowledge--at least, it is making knowledge doubly useful.

_28th._--I send you a long extract from the last of Hertford’s Western Isle letters. He is now at Edinburgh.

“I have been at the island of St. Kilda; the passage to it was stormy and dangerous, which kept us always on the look out. St. Kilda is so remote and solitary, that I had expected to find it more interesting than it is in fact, for I had hoped to find some peculiarities among the inhabitants, in which I might trace the olden times. Unfortunately the clergyman was absent, and as the inhabitants have not learned to speak English, we could not have any very satisfactory intercourse with them.

“They were a little alarmed at first, by the sight of strangers, and fled in all directions; but they soon became calm, and treated us very hospitably. They seemed to be a most innocent contented set of people--about a hundred all together--and were very comfortably dressed. They use the quern, or hand-mill, as in all the Hebrides, to grind their oatmeal, and to make their snuff. Their usual snuff-box is a simple cow’s horn, stopped at the large end, and a small piece cut off at the point, to let out the snuff, where they fix a leather plug. This is still called a _snuff-mill_ in Scotland, for they formerly used a machine attached to it, like a nutmeg-grater, which made the snuff, as often as a pinch was required; and my companion says that this is the custom also amongst the shepherds of the Alps.

“Their houses are constructed without mortar, for there is no lime on the island; the stone walls, which are raised only three or four feet from the ground, are double, and the interval is filled with earth. In the walls there are several recesses, each covered by a flag; and in these holes, like ovens, the people sleep. The windows and chimneys are simple openings in the roof; from which also hang their implements of husbandry, as well as of bird-catching, with their ropes, and fishing-rods, &c. and many long bladders, containing the oil of the _fulmar_, to supply their lamps, and also to use as a medicine. Every person has a dog, a small rough species of the Highland terrier, which scrambles along the cliffs, and creeps into the holes of the Ailsa cocks, who live in the ground, like rabbits.

“As to music, for which St. Kilda was famous, I am sorry to say that neither bagpipe nor violin were in the island when I was there; the airs, it is said, are very plaintive, like the generality of Highland music.

“The mode of preserving the peat in winter, and also the corn and hay, is ingenious, and peculiar, I am told, to this island. They are kept in buildings, which from their domed shape appeared most extraordinary, till I discovered their purpose. They are the first objects visible on approaching from sea, and I, of course, thought they were the dwellings of the natives. The sides admit a free passage of air, but the roofs are rendered water-tight by a covering of turf; the domes are formed by the regular diminution of the courses of masonry, and the whole is closed and secured at top by a few large heavy stones.

“The bird-catchers of this island have long been celebrated. The puffins are caught in their burrows by the dogs, and the chase is usually managed by the children, while the men are engaged in the pursuit of more difficult game. Gannets, or Solan-geese, and other large birds, are taken by hand, or with snares, on their nests; for which purpose the bird-catchers descend the cliffs, by the assistance of a rope, which is sometimes made of hair, or sometimes of slips of twisted cow-hide.

“A party, who were provided with these ropes, led me to the brink of a precipice, of such a height, that the sea, dashing against the rocks below, was not heard above. Several of the ropes having been tied to one another, to increase their length, the man who was going down fastened one end of it round his waist, and the other end he let down the precipice, to about the depth to which he intended to go; then giving the middle of the rope to a man to hold, he began to descend, always steadying himself by one part of the rope as he let himself down by the other. He was supported from falling only by the single man above, who merely held it in his hands, and sometimes with one hand alone, looking at the same time over the precipice, without any stay for his feet, and conversing with the young man as he descended. In a short time, however, he returned, with a fulmar in his hand; it was placed on the ground, and a little dog having been set at it, the angry bird repeatedly cast out quantities of pure oil, which it spat in the dog’s face.

“I accompanied the same party in one of their night expeditions, as far at least as the edge of the precipice, in order to see them catch the Solan-geese. These wary birds have always a sentinel to keep watch; the object is therefore, by surprising him, to prevent his giving the alarm; for this purpose, the catcher descends the rock, at some distance from the sentinel, and then passing along horizontally, comes upon him unperceived, and so quickly breaks his neck, that the other birds are not roused. He then quietly removes one into the nest of another, which causes an immediate battle; this disturbs all the geese on the rock, and while they are gaping at the combat they are easily caught;--the man twisting the necks of as many as he chooses, and thrusting their heads into his belt--eight hundred are sometimes taken by this method in one night.

“There is a loose skin under their bill, in which these birds can carry four or five herrings at a time, besides sprats, which the young pick out with their bill, through the mouth of the parent, as with a pair of pincers. When the gannets observe a shoal of herrings, they close their wings to their sides and precipitate themselves head-foremost into the water, dropping just like a stone.--Their eye is so exact in doing this, that they are sure to rise with a fish in their mouth.

“I must also mention the _Foolish Guillemot_.--A rock-man descends at night by his rope to the ledge of a precipice, where he fixes himself, and tying round him a piece of white linen, awaits the approach of the bird, who, mistaking the cloth for a rock, alights on it, and is killed immediately. This silly bird lays but one egg, and without any nest to protect it: so that when disturbed, she frequently tumbles it down the rocks as she rises.”

_29th._--I have been labouring most diligently at my garden, and many a time did I wish that my Mamma and Marianne could have seen how much the indolent Bertha, as she used to be called, is improved in activity and in real strength. I was preparing a bed for hyacinths; taking out the old soil, and putting nice fresh earth, mixed with sand, in its place. Wentworth helped me to dig out the earth, and Frederick and his wheelbarrow were for a long time busily employed in taking it away. My aunt had given me the bulbs, and we were anxious to complete the job, before the weather should become too wet.

My uncle paid us a visit, and seemed pleased with us all. He likes to see that sort of patient perseverance--it is more valuable, he says, than genius; and in the evening, he read to us the following anecdote from Bakewell’s Savoy, to shew how much may be done by it.

The mineral waters of Breda were formerly covered by a sudden inundation of the river Isere, and lost. In the summer of 1819, the breaking down of the side of a _glacier_, in one of the upper valleys of that river, produced another inundation, which brought down with it an immense quantity of stones and earth, that blocked up the river and forced it into a new channel. A miller and his family, who lived on the banks, narrowly escaped with their lives, and most of his little property and all his winter stores were swept away. He was then an old man; but nature had given him that resolute spirit, which regards common calamities only as motives for additional exertion. He lost no time in useless lamentations, and immediately began, not only to repair, but to improve, and to provide, as much as possible, against a recurrence of similar misfortunes. He excavated with his own hands a large cellar in the rock near his mill, partly by the pickaxe, and partly by blasting with gunpowder; and there his stores and winter provisions were safe from any power of destruction, less formidable than an earthquake.

But this industrious man had long been the wonder of the _commune_. One of his performances, that almost exceeds belief, was the removal, in 1796, of an immense block of marble, and the working it into a millstone for crushing walnuts. The block had fallen into the valley, about three hundred yards from his mill. He had often viewed it with a wishful eye, but to remove it seemed beyond his power; he was, however, then in the vigour of life, and he resolved to attempt it. He began by cutting the stone into a proper form, which was a labour of many months; when this was done, by the aid of his wife, his mother, and his servant boy, and with some miserable pulleys, he contrived, for several successive weeks, to move it a few inches, or a few yards every day, according to the nature of the ground, till at length he brought it safely within his