And who among ancient heroes could better deserve to have his memory embalmed than he whom an honorable foe thus eulogized?--"Blest be thy soul, thou king of shells! In peace thou art the gale of spring; in war, the mountain storm." And what touching interest to us of later times hangs round this legendary champion of the right, when we listen to his mingled strain of triumph, lament, and justification!--"When will Fingal cease to fight? I was born in the midst of battles, and my steps must move in blood to the tomb, But my hand did not injure the weak, my steel did not touch the feeble in arms. I behold thy tempests, O Morven! which will overturn my halls, when my children are dead in battle, and none remains to dwell in Selma. Then will the feeble come, but they will not know my tomb. My renown is only in song, My deeds shall be as a dream to future times!" Yes, a dream,--and we are the dreamers. The songs of the bards are ringing in our ears, and though no stone marks the tomb of Fingal, the stones talk of him; the great basaltic columns are his memorial pillars, and the sea yet sounds his dirge as its wailing echo sweeps mournfully through Fingal's Cave. But hark! The bell of the Pioneer is rousing us with the cry, "Wake up, ye dreamers! Come back from the clouds, ye visionaries!" The time for Staffa is up, and the steamer, like a cackling hen who is eager to call her brood together, commences a system of coaxing, warning, and threat, which soon results in the converging of her passengers from every quarter of the island. Most of them are by this time rambling over its upper surface, and all make for the rough stairway where the comparative difficulties of the "ascensus" and "descensus" are in complete contradiction to classical authority: the former having been accomplished with ease, while the latter proves a terrific experience. There is truly something maternal about the Pioneer; for here, as at every other point of difficulty on our excursion, faithful guides are stationed and strong hands outstretched for our assistance. Still it is with a plunge,--half a nightmare and half a miracle,--that we, who are among the earliest to make the experiment, arrive safely at the bottom, and, stepping on board a boat, regain the steamer, where we sit at our leisure and laugh at the absurd figure made by later comers as they scramble down the cliff: Sir Thomas even forgetting his dignity in the difficulties of the operation, and the interjectional phrases of her Ladyship, as she now and then comes to a hopeless stand-still, tickling our ears at the distance where we sit watching them.