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28, 1860.] the train. Warning was taken by this: and at New York the coffin was not landed till two Mrs. Brown’s arrival was also not announced. Yet early in the morning crowds assembled at the house where the body was; and it was necessary to allow access to the coffin. The serene face was looked at by eager thousands. There was no shroud; but the man lay in his ordinary clothes. An eminent citizen from Philadelphia, and another from New York, and another from Boston escorted Mrs. Brown to her home in Vermont, and witnessed her hero’s burial. She and her children are adopted by the free States. It will be time enough to speak of the results of John Brown’s crusade when we see more of them. They are abundantly remarkable already, and they will be more so by the time this portrait is in print. Our business has been with the character of the man. It has impressed the national imagination for ever in his own country. Some eminent citizens of Virginia cannot bear the force of it, and are preparing to migrate, with their property, to Europe. (Their slaves they must leave behind). Among those who must remain, the children will never forget the man, nor lose the impression of the winter nights following his death. In Cumberland the aurora borealis is called “Lord Derwentwater’s lights,” because it was particularly splendid the night after his execution. The Virginia children will shiver for life when they remember John Brown’s lights—those mysterious lights which ascend every night in the direction of Harper’s Ferry, and are answered from various parts of the horizon—in spite of all efforts of police and military to make out what they mean. John Brown is as sure of immortality as Washington himself. .

the world has heard of the marvels of Addelsberg and Adderbach, the wizard-haunts of Faust in the Hartz, and the epic “Fatherland” of Tell in Zurich. But in the wilds of Transylvania, scarce trodden by the foot of a stranger, are scenes which reduce the Hartzberg to a simple upland, and legends which would have made the heart of Goethe and Schiller thrill with inspiration.

Among the former there is a place, the remnant of an elder world, a shattered fragment of the vast skeleton of creation left naked at the ebbing of Deluge, and which, seen, whether by sunshine or by moonlight, should leave “Der Teufels Tanz-platz,” or the wizard dens of the Brocken, scenes of a common world.

Beyond the right bank of the Manos, in the range of hills which extends to the western Alps, or snowy mountains of Transylvania, is a gigantic and wondrous chasm, called “The Torda-hasadik,” and which gives name to the town of Torda, though it is eight miles distant.

In advancing from this place the effect of the great antediluvian memorial is much heightened by the contrast of the living world through which it is approached. For some distance after leaving the town, a beautiful valley extends before us, interspersed with villages, and bounded by hills covered with forests. Pursuing the course of a small stream which winds through the valley, we arrive at a mill surrounded by meadows, and about three-quarters of a mile farther reach the opening of the chasm.

To the left the face of the hill is bare; on the right still covered with umbrage, though now the foliage is dwindled into copse; but as we advance the stream becomes enclosed between rocks, vegetation disappears, and the cliffs exhibit a more imposing sight at every step, till suddenly we stand in the gorge of the Torda.

It is impossible to render an adequate description of this appalling scene. The ruins of a thousand churches, towers, pillars, and obelisks seem to rise before us in fearful confusion. The mind feels overpowered by the awful devastation; the cliffs are brown, white, and red, giving the appearance of a city destroyed by fire. The bed of the stream is in some places twenty-four feet, in others forty feet wide; but the breadth of the chasm increases with the height, until the summits of the rocks on either side are about a musket-shot apart. The extent of the chasm is something more than half a mile, and the height of the craigs exceeds that of the loftiest tower. After passing the entrance, a gateway seems to rise before us, formed by an arch of rock forty feet in length. Advancing a few hundred paces on the stones of the stream, two caverns are discovered in the precipices on either side of the gulf, their mouths strongly walled up, and provided with loop-holes and windows. Formerly, upon the summit of the hill above, there was a monastery, a small wooden church, and a hermitage, surrounded by centenary oaks, walnuts, and cherry-trees, which, though the buildings are ruined, still enclose the solitary domain. The monastery belonged to the Wallachians, and was burned during the late insurrection, to prevent the house from serving as a place of refuge to the disorderly bands by which various parts of the country were infested.

According to an ancient legend, the chasm was formed by the rending of the hill at the prayer of St. Lászlo, who, being pursued by the Kuns, from a lost battle, as the foremost of the pursuers were coming up, prayed for deliverance, when the hill rent asunder between the king and his enemies, and formed the gulf of the Torda. Upon one of the rocks the print of his horse’s shoe—like that of the horse of Fingal in the Highlands of Scotland, is shown by the people to this day. Miles, who visited the spot in the seventeenth century, describes this impression as having an octagon form, but was doubtful whether it was a natural feature or, like the figure of the Saxon badge—the “horsa”—in the vale of “White Horse,” it was the work of man.

The origin of the legend may, however, be traced in history. Bonfi relates that the Kuns frequently devastated the frontiers of Transylvania in the eleventh century during the reign of St. Lászlo, and that the king gave them battle