regicides had a good deal to do with it. In this
college, one sees the best that Puritanism could produce; and I thought
what Oxford and Cambridge might have become under the invading reforms
of the usurpation, had the Protectorate been less impotent to reproduce
itself, and carry out its natural results on those venerable
foundations.

On the day following that of the Commencement, I took a drive to West
Rock. I was so happy as to have the company of a very intelligent person
from the Southern States, and of a young lady, his relative, who was
very ambitious to make the excursion. It was a pleasant drive of about
three miles to the foot of the mountain, where we alighted, the driver
leaving the horses in charge of themselves, and undertaking the office
of guide. It was somewhat tedious climbing for our fair friend; but up
we went, over rough stones, creeping vines and brushwood, that showed no
signs of being very frequently disturbed; our guide keeping the bright
buttons of his coat-skirts before us, and in some other respects
reminding me of Mephistopheles on the Hartz. It certainly was very
accommodating in Nature, to provide the lofty chambers of the regicides
with such a staircase; for in their day it must have defied any ordinary
search, and when found must have presented as many barriers of brier and
thicket, as grew up around the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale.

As we reached what seemed to be the top of the rock, we came suddenly
into an open place, but so surrounded by trees and shrubs, as
effectually to shut in the view. Here was the cave; and very different
it was from what we had expected to find it! We had prepared ourselves
to explore a small Antiparos, and were quite chagrined to find our
grotto diminished to a mere den or covert, between two immense stones of
a truly Stonehengian appearance and juxtaposition. I doubted for a
moment whether their singular situation, on the top of this mountain,
were matter for the geologist or the antiquary; and would like to refer
the question to the learned Dean of Westminster, who hammers stones as
eloquently as some of his predecessors have hammered pulpits. The stones
are well-nigh equal in height, of about twenty feet perpendicular, one
of them nearly conical, and the other almost a true parallelopiped.
Betwixt them another large stone appears to have fallen, till it became
wedged; and the very small aperture between this stone and the ground
beneath, is all th