44 i Bibliographical Notice. 



but drank-in in silence the scene in all its wonderful details — a scene 

 the like of which neither of us probably will ever see again in this 

 life. My thoughts were those not only of delight and admiration, 

 but also of inquiry and wonder : here, on this spot (to speak of it 

 alone), has all the exuberance of creative power and matchless beauty 

 been manifesting itself, not for a generation or two, but for thou- 

 sands, it may be millions of years, and manifesting itself not for the 

 teaching of blind error-loving mortals, but in solemn everlasting 

 silence and loneliness. What a subject for contemplation ! the love 

 of the Creator for all His works ; the satisfaction of llim in their 

 beauty, as the incarnation of His ideas of beauty, to-day just as 

 much as at their first creation. 'Behold, it was very good;' 

 that makes it all clear and intelligible ; and I say to myself, as I 

 desire to know more of laws and of His scheme of creation, the stu- 

 dent of nature is a happy man. It is enough for the disciple that 

 he be as his Master" (p. 125). 



Like many travellers before him, Mr. Clark seems to have had a 

 peculiar aversion to snakes ; and no wonder, in a country like Brazil, 

 where they may be said to abound arl nausea?/? : " As for snakes, I 

 have said nothing about them ; but I can sum them up in a line, — 

 they are, with the exception of yellow fever, the only really bad 

 things in all Brazil. Combine your ideas of an incarnation of trea- 

 chery, of malice, of cunning, of cruelty, of ugliness, of everything 

 that is mean and grovelling and wicked, and you have the combina- 

 tion to perfection in one supreme effort of nature — a snake's head" 

 (p. 144). And, again, "I saw, the other day, a really large speci- 

 men of a snake : we were riding along, very early in the morning, 

 by moonlight, to avoid the midday heat, when, between my mule 

 and the side of the road, under a bank, I was conscious of a body 

 on the ground moving past me ; and it was light enough to see that 

 our mules had edged in between themselves and the bank a large 

 snake, I should think, about twelve or fifteen feet long. The beast 

 had no difficulty in getting ahead of us and disappearing on the 

 other side of the road. It seemed about as thick as one's knee-joint, 

 and to progress, not, as I liad supposed, by a wriggling eel-like 

 movement, but as if impelled by some inner machinery, almost with- 

 out wriggling its body at all. It was an ugly sight to see in the 

 cold moonlight ; and I was as glad as the beast was to part com- 

 pany " (pp. 162, 163). 



There are many other passages which we should have been tempted 

 to quote, did space permit. We feel sure, however, that any little 

 imperfections which may seem to attach to this volume, on account 

 of the light and often comical style in which some of the Letters are 

 written, will be generously allowed for when the circumstances of its 

 publication are taken into account. A painful and protracted illness 

 had, for some four or five years before his death, been gradually un- 

 dermining Mr. Claik's powers for more than the most desultory 

 work ; and feeling, therefore, that his end was fast approaching, it is 

 not unnatural that he should have conceived a desire to place on 

 recoid, in connexion with the name of so true and valued a friend 



