The Knickerbocker | Page 8

shadow of ?tna was cast across the island, and all beneath it rested in twilight-gloom. Turning from this wonderful scene, we looked down into the crater, on whose verge we lay. It was a fearful sight, apparently more than a thousand feet in depth, and a mile in breadth, with precipitous and in some places overhanging sides, which were varied with strange and discordant colors. The steeps were rent into deep chasms and gulfs, from which issued white sulphurous smoke, that rose and hung in fantastic wreaths about the horrid crags; thence springing over the edge of the crater, seemed to dissipate in the clear keen air. I was somewhat surprised to perceive several sheets of snow lying at the very bottom of the crater, a proof that the internal fires were in a deep slumber. The edge of the crater was a mere ridge of scori? and ashes, varying in height; and it required some care, in places, to avoid falling down the steep on one hand, or being precipitated into the gulf on the other. The air was keen; but fortunately there was little wind; and after spending about an hour on the summit, we commenced our descent.
We varied our course from the one we took on ascending, and visited an altar erected to Jupiter by the ancients, now called the Torre del Filosofo. Soon after we came upon the verge of a vast crater, the period of whose activity is beyond the earliest records of history. Val di Bove, as it is called, is a tremendous scene. Imagine a basin several miles across, a thousand feet in depth at least, with craggy and perpendicular walls on every side; its bottom broken into deep ravines and chasms, and shattered pinnacles, as though the lava in its molten state had been shaken and tossed by an earthquake, and then suddenly congealed. It is into this ancient crater that the lava of the most recent eruption is descending. It is fortunate that it has taken that direction.
In another and concluding number, the reader's attention will be directed to the Architectural Antiquities of Sicily, especially those of Grecian structure, which will be described in the order in which they were visited.

LINES TO TIME.
BY MRS. J. WEBB.
Oh Time! I'll weave, to deck thy brow, A wreath fresh culled from Flora's treasure: If thou wilt backward turn thy flight To youth's bright morn of joy and pleasure. 'Joys ill exchanged for riper years;' The bard, alas! hath truly spoken: I've wept the truth in burning tears O'er many a fair hope crushed and broken.
In vain my sager, wiser friends Told of thy speed and wing untiring; I drank of Pleasure's honied cup, Nor marked thy flight, no change desiring; When all too late I gave thee chase, But found thou couldst not be o'ertaken: With heedless wing thou'st onward swept, Though hopes were crushed and empires shaken.
Thou with the world thy flight began'st; Compared with thine, what were the knowledge Of every sage in every clime, The learning of the school or college? Thou'st seen, in all the pomp of power, Athens, the proudest seat of learning; And thou couldst tell us if thou wouldst, How Nero looked when Rome was burning.
What direful sights hast thou beheld, As careless thou hast journied on: The hemlock-bowl for Athen's pride; The gory field of Marathon; The monarch crowned, the warrior plumed, With power and with ambition burning; Yet they must all have seemed to thee Poor pigmies on a pivot turning.
Their pomp, their power, with thine compared, How blank and void, how frail and fleeting! Thou hast not paused e'en o'er their tombs To give their mighty spirits greeting; But onward still with untired wing, Regardless thou 'rt thy flight pursuing, Unseen, alas! till thou art past, While o'er our heads thy snows thou 'rt strewing.
Oh! vainly may poor mortals strive With learned lore of school and college; Their books may teach us wisdom's rules, But thou alone canst teach us knowledge. Oh! had I earlier known thy worth, I had not now been left repining, Nor asked to weave for thee the wreath That on my youthful brow was shining. Could but again the race be mine, In life's young morn, I'd seek and find thee; I'd seize thee by thy flowing lock, And never more be left behind thee!

A NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIE.
BY A BUFFALO HUNTER.
While looking over my 'omnium gatherum;' the same being a drawer containing scraps of poetry, unfinished letters, half-written editorials, incidents of travel, obsolete briefs, with many other odds and ends that have fallen from my brain during the last three years, but which from want of quality in them or lack of energy in me, have failed to reach the dignity of types and ink; I came across