Our Way Across The Sea.

ADAPTED TO THE MUCH ADMIRED AIR OF

“LA SUISSESSE AU HORD DU LAC.”

Published by permission of LEE & WALKER, 188 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia,

Publishers and Importers of Music and Musical Instruments.

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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XLI.     PHILADELPHIA, SEPTEMBER, 1852.     No. 3.

Only imagine yourself, says a writer in the Journal 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 lessens 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 involuntarily to what great artist your praise is due; 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.

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 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 solitude too desolate for aught save the cawing of rooks, and the twittering of swallows.

The average height of the basaltic columns constituting the Giant’s Causeway is thirty feet; but the whole neighborhood is strewn with detached fragments of the same species of rock, that in their picturesque 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