4A 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 Him 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 ad nauseam: “ As for snakes, 1 
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 had 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. Clark’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 
record, in connexion with the name of so true and valued a friend 
