The reader must not suppose, when I describe these walls, formed of the debris of the glacier, as consisting of boulders, stones, pebbles, sand, and gravel, a rough accumulation of loose materials indiscriminately thrown together, that we find the ancient moraines presenting any such appearance.  Time, which mellows and softens all the wrecks of the past, has clothed them with turf, grassed them over, planted them with trees, sown his seed and gathered in his harvests upon them, until at last they make a part of the undulating surface of the country.  Were it not for anticipating my story, I could point out many a green billow, rising out of the fields and meadows immediately about us, that had its origin in the old ice-time.  Thus disguised, they are not so evident to the casual observer; but, nevertheless, when once familiar with the peculiar form, character, and position of these rounded ridges scattered over the face of the country, they are easily recognized.

Of course, the ancient glaciers of Great Britain were far more difficult to trace than those of Switzerland, where the present glaciers are guides to the old ones.  But, nevertheless, my expectations were more than answered.  The first valley I entered in the glacial regions of Scotland was barred by a terminal moraine; and throughout the North of England, as well as in Scotland and Ireland, I found the hill-sides covered with traces of glacial action, as distinct and unmistakable as those I had left in my native land.  And not only was the surface of the country polished, grooved, and scratched, as in the region of existing glaciers, and presenting an appearance corresponding exactly to that described elsewhere, but we could track the path of the boulders where they had come down from the hills above and been carried from the mouth of each valley far down into the plains below.  In Scotland and Ireland the phenomena were especially interesting.  I had intended to give in this article some account of the “parallel roads” of Glenroy, marking the ancient levels of glacier-lakes, so much discussed in this connection.  But the reminiscences of old friends, and the many associations revived in my mind by recurring to a subject which I have long looked upon as a closed chapter, so far as my own researches are concerned, have constantly led me beyond the limits I had prescribed to myself in these papers upon glaciers; and as the story of Glenroy and the phenomena connected with it is a long one, I shall reserve it for a subsequent number.

* * * * *

BRYANT.

The literary life of Bryant begins with the publication of “Thanatopsis” in the “North American Review,” in 1816; for we need take no account of those earlier blossoms, plucked untimely from the tree, as they had been prematurely expanded by the heat of party politics.  The strain of that song was of a higher mood.  In those days, when American literature spoke with faint and feeble voice, like