GROTTOES.

THE names of deities were given to GROTTOEs as well as to fountains. The serenity of an Italian sky rendered those occasional retreats peculiarly agreeable to the Roman nobles: hence they were so commonly found in the shrubberies and gardens of that extraordinary people. The poets, at all times ready to celebrate whatever added to their enjoyments, have left us some beautiful descriptions of those recesses, formed in the sides of rocks, at the base of mountains, or on the banks of rivulets. Many of these still remain in Italy, containing multitudes of small paintings, representing vases, festoons, leaves, butterflies, shells, and fruits.

Pausanias gives an account of a remarkable grotto at Corycium, and Statius describes one that was very curious; but the one most celebrated in ancient times was the grotto of Egeria, still existing, though in a state of ruin. When this grotto was first excavated by Numa, it was formed with such skill as to appear without the smallest traces of art; but in the reign of one of the emperors it lost all its simplicity, and, being adorned with marble and other splendid ornaments, acquired a magnificence wholly at variance with its original character. This provoked the satire of the indignant Juvenal; it is now, however, said to have returned to its primitive simplicity, being adorned with moss, violets, sweetbriars, honeysuckles, and hawthorns.

The grotto formed by Pope at Twickenham was one of the most celebrated ever constructed in England. In the first instance, it was remarkable for its elegant simplicity. As the owner advanced in years, however, it became more and more indebted to the refinements of art; but the recollection of its having amused the declining years of the illustrious poet atones to the heart of the philanthropist for what is

lost to the eye of taste. The inscription he wrote for the fountain in this grotto seems to have been conceived from the following laconic fragment:

"Nymphæ. loci. bibe. lava. tace."

Gaffarel, librarian to Cardinal Richelieu, wrote a history of all the vaults, mines, caves, catacombs, and grottoes which he had visited during his travels of thirty years: the principal grottoes were that of Pausilippo; that of the serpents, near Civita Vecchia; the Witches' Grotto, near the Ganges; those in the Highlands of Scotland; on the banks of the Onon and Yenisei, in Siberia; the bone-caves in Egypt; the yellow cave in the valley of Alcantara; that of Pilate among the Alps, as well as those of Bruder Bahn and of Glaris; those of the Carpathian Mountains, and the Dragon's Cave in the landgravate of Hesse Darmstadt, and the immense caverns at Alcantara, near the city of Lisbon.

In natural grottoes it is that we occasionally find the most beautiful specimens of spars, while artificial ones are not unfrequently decorated with shells worthy the residence of Doris and the Nereids.

The first race of men are represented by the ancient writers to have been born and to have resided in caves and grottoes. Such were the dwellings of the Cimmerians, to whom Homer and Herodotus so frequently allude.

And here we may remark, that in Russia there is a cave so large as to contain several subterranean lakes, while the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky is from six to nine miles in length. The grotto of Antiparos, however, one of the Cyclades, is the most celebrated, on account of its remarkable petrifactions, the island in which it is situated being a rock of marble sixteen miles in circumference.

LAKES.

FROM rivers, fountains, and grottoes, let us turn to LAKES. Those of Switzerland present so many features of beauty and grandeur, that an idea of something peculiarly worthy of admiration presents itself when we hear them mentioned.

How often have I heard you, my Lelius, descant with rapture on the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland; on those of Loch-Lomond, Loch-Leven, and Killarney; those of the Arkansas,* and the still more noble and magnificent ones of Switzerland. With what delighted attention have I listened to your descriptions of the lakes of Thun, Zurich, and Neufchatel, Brientz, Bienne, and Constance; and how has my imagination kept pace with you, as you have wandered in memory among those enchanting regions: regions abounding in scenes which Warton might have pictured as the native residence of poetic fancy.

SULZER, born at Winterthun, in the canton of Zurich, animated by the example of Gessner the naturalist, lived to produce two works, of which his country is justly proud: a History of the Fine Arts, and Moral Contemplations on the Works of Nature. Charmed with the splendour of the material world, he lived innocently and contentedly, and at length died in so placid a manner that his friends for some time doubted whether death or sleep had suspended his conversation.

The lakes near the Arkansas, in the valley of the Mississippi, are covered with the flowers of the nymphea nelumbo, the external leaves of a brilliant white, and the internal of a beautiful yellow. "These lakes," says Mr. Flint, "are so entirely covered with these large conical leaves, nearly of the size of a parasol, and a smaller class of aquatic plant, of the same form of leaves, but with a yellow flower, that a bird might walk from stone to stone without dipping its feet in water; and these plants rise from all depths of water up to ten feet."-Recollec tions, p. 269.

GESSNER, whose countenance bespoke a paradise within, had his genius first called into action by reading the works of the now almost-forgotten BROCKES, who had selected for himself a species of poetry which exhibited the various beauties of Nature in the minutest details. Warm from the works of that poet, the scenery of Berg acquired new charms, and animated Gessner with new impulses, that town being situated in the most delightful part of the canton of Zurich. To the memory of this poet, his fellow-citizens have erected a monument, in which Nature and Poesy are represented weeping over his urn, in a romantic valley watered by the Limmat and the Sihl. This monument is the work of Trippel of Schaffhausen; and the artist dying while still young, his work may be said to form a "cenotaph scarcely less for himself than for Gessner." Gessner's writings, however, will perpetuate his name longer than a mausoleum of Parian marble. And here I may be permitted to pay a willing, though inadequate, tribute to the beauty of those lakes immortalized by the pens of Gessner, Haller, and Zimmermann; nor can I hesitate to call that man senseless who could behold with indifference the solitary, yet beautiful waters of Greiffen; those of Como, bordered by vineyards and backed by hills, like a stately amphitheatre, clothed with lime, chestnut, and almond trees; the craggy precipices rising over the Lake of Chiavenna, magnificent in the midst of sterility; and the waters of Joux, imbedded in a valley, with a rocky shore mantled with wood, and having on its opposite sides a richly-cultivated ascent, studded with pines and sycamores. Still more beautiful is the Lake of Wallenstadt, surrounded on three sides by mountains, with wild and picturesque, craggy and inaccessible rocks, abounding in waterfalls. Then we may gaze upon the small Lake of Zug, hanging, as it were, like a nest, within the bosom of a fine country, and upon that of Thun, at D

right angles with the Lake of Brientz, both bordered by steep mountains, strikingly variegated. The Lake of Bienne, so exquisitely diversified, and that of Neufchatel, profusely rich in wood, fields, meadows, and vineyards. The Lake of Uri-beautiful to a proverb-with its wild and romantic rocks, embellished with forests of pine and beech. That of the Four Cantons is the finest in all Switzerland for the greatness and variety of its parts, and for the magnificence and boldness of its contrasts. That of Constance, of an oval form, and green in the colour of its waters, is surrounded by hills, rising in gradation, covered with farmhouses, villages, towns, and monasteries. Still more delightful is the Lake of Zurich, with banks, behind which rears in stately majesty a stupendous chain of lofty mountains; while the waters of Geneva, blue and transparent, reflect every variety of landscape, from the mild and beautiful, to the picturesque, the magnificent, and the sublime.

On the banks of this lake resided the learned and accomplished Gibbon learned and accomplished, but too regardless of his country, and too skeptical for his own good or for the welfare of mankind. There-at Lausanne, beautifully situated on the Lake of Geneva-he began and completed that great monument of his fame, his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There is a mixture of sublimity and pathos in the passage where he describes the close of his vast undertaking, peculiarly impressive. "I have presumed to mark the moment of conception (amid the ruins of Rome); I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or, rather, night of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summerhouse in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the