This remarkable object is an enormous mass of sand, such as has been already described; fine, light, of a yellowish hue, and the sport of every wind. It is blown into plains, valleys, and hills. The hills are of every height, from ten to two hundred feet. Frequently they are naked, round, and extremely elegant, and often rough, pointed, wild, and fantastical, with all the varied forms, which are seen at times in drifts of snow. Some of them are covered with beach-grass: some fringed with wortleberry-bushes; and some tufted with a small and singular growth of oaks. The variety and wildness of the forms, the desolate aspect of the surface, the height of the loftier elevations, the immense length of the range, and the tempestuous tossing of the clouds of sand, formed a group of objects, novel, sublime, and more interesting than can be imagined. It was a barrier against the ambition and fretfulness of the ocean, restlessly and always employed in assailing its strength, and wearing away its mass. To my own fancy it appeared as the eternal boundary of a region, wild, dreary, and inhospitable, where no human being could dwell, and into which every human foot was forbidden to enter. The parts of this barrier which have been covered with wortleberry-bushes, and with oaks, have been either not at all, or very little blown. The oaks, particularly, appear to be the continuation of the forests originally formed on this spot. Their appearance was new and singular. Few, if any of them, rose above the middle stature of man; yet they were not shrubs, but trees of a regular stem and structure. They wore all the marks of extreme age; were in some instances already decayed, and in others decaying; were hoary with moss, and were deformed by branches, broken and wasted, not by violence but by time. The whole appearance of one of these trees strongly reminded me of a little withered old man. Indeed a Liliputian of three score years and ten, compared with a veteran of Brobdingnag, would very naturally illustrate the resemblance, or rather the contrast between one of these dwarfs, and a full-grown tenant of our forests. Travels in New England and New York.

THE BURNING OF FAIRFIELD, CONN.

On the 7th of July, 1779, Governor Tryon sailed from New Haven to Fairfield and the next morning disembarked upon the beach. A few militia assembled to oppose him, and in a desultory scattered manner fought with great intrepidity through most of the day. They killed some, took several prisoners and wounded more. But the expedition was so sudden and unexpected that the efforts made in this manner were necessarily fruitless. The town was plundered; a great part of the houses, together with the two churches, the court-house, jail and school-houses, were burnt. The barns had just been filled with wheat and other produce. While the town was in flames, a thunder-storm overspread the heavens, just as night came on. The conflagration of two hundred houses illumined the earth, the clouds, and the waves of the Sound with a union of gloom and grandeur at once inexpressibly awful and magnificent. The sky speedily was hung with the deepest darkness wherever the clouds were not tinged by the melancholy lustre of the flames. At intervals, the lightning blazed with a livid and terrible splendor. The thunder rolled above. Beneath, the roaring of the fires filled up the intervals, while a deep and hollow sound, which seemed to be the protracted murmur of the thunder, reverberated from one end of heaven to the other. Add to this convulsion of the elements and these dreadful effects of vindictive and wanton devastation, the trembling of the earth, the sharp sounds of muskets occasionally discharged, the groans here and there of the wounded and dying, and the shouts of triumph; then place before your eyes the crowds of miserable sufferers, mingled with bodies of the militia, and from the neighboring hills taking a farewell prospect of their property and their dwellings, their happiness and their hopes, and you will form a just but imperfect picture of the burning of Fairfield. It needed no great effort of imagination to believe that the final day had arrived; and that, amid this funereal darkness, the morning would speedily dawn, to which no night would ever succeed.-New England Travels.

DWIGHT, TIMOTHY, D.D., LL.D., American

minister and educator, born at Norwich, Conn., November 16, 1828, grandson of Professor Timothy Dwight of Yale College (1752-1817). He graduated at Yale, 1849; was tutor in the college, 185155, meanwhile studying in Yale Divinity School, 1851-53. He was licensed as a Congregational preacher, 1855; studied divinity at Bonn and Berlin, 1856-58; was appointed to the chair of sacred literature and New Testament Greek in Yale Divinity School, 1858; and was elected to succeed. Dr. Noah Porter as President of Yale University, 1886. He was an associate editor of the New Englander, and was an active member of the American committee for revising the English version of the Bible, 1872-85. He published The True Ideal of an American University (1872); and extensive revisions and notes, in translation from German commentaries on various books of the New Testament.

PRESIDENT PORTER.

The friend in whose honor we are met together this afternoon has passed beyond our sight and our fellowship into the other life. As I think of the passing and the new beginning, in these earliest days of the separation that has taken place, this little part of the picturing of the heavenly city comes impressively to my mind. The man whom we knew, how many sided he was in

his capacities for enjoyment and in the out-going of his thoughts. His mind was open everywhere. His intellectual powers rejoiced in their constant and most varied activity. The beautiful had a charming influence for him in whatever sphere it revealed itself. If we speak to one another of his intellectual gifts, I am sure we shall say all of us—the same thing. He was strong in the native force of his mind, quick in mental action, keen in his insight, firm in his grasp of truth, rich in his thinking, but, most of all, wide in his reach. His eye kindled with enthusiasm as he saw the first opening of new ideas. His face beamed with joy as he gained new measures of knowledge. The field of truth was full of attractiveness for him, and he was glad to enter it by any pathway. The flowers, and the thoughts of men; the revelations of science, and the busy life of society; the deep mysteries of theology, and the treasures of literature; the possibilities of meaning in words, and the forces which bear sway in human life-he would know of them all. He moved with alertness after them all. Reading with rapid movement, learning with wonderful facility, gathering the results of study as a permanent possession through the power of a retentive memory, he took to himself constantly the abundant fruits which educated life could bestow upon him, and rejoiced in them greatly as he received them. He saw with clear vision what was within him and what was without him; and could work with so much ease and quickness, that he seemed to have the power of working in both spheres at once. The working continued, and after the same manner, even to the latest days. He was ready in his age, as he had been in his youth, to turn with attentive interest to every thought or suggestion which might give additional light or point the way to larger knowledge. When the outward man appeared to be manifestly losing the vigor and energy of the long-continued years of strength, the inward man still kept the brightness which had been shining upon it and within it from the beginning. Life still had its beautiful side wherever there were thoughts to be offered or knowledge to be acquired.

Hopefulness also was in him as an intellectual man,

and confidence in the future. He reached out after more for the growth of his own life, and he believed that more was to be given to the world's life. There was nothing in him of the man who fears investigation or distrusts the power of the truth to protect itself.

With no rashness, and no hastening after new suggestions as if truth had no past life and force, he was ever ready to move onward when the pathway was truly opened. His eye was always forward in its outlook, and not turned wholly backward. Hope was his watchword in this regard. Confidence was his strength. He would not live in the sphere of memory only, however happy that sphere might seem to be. The very ardor of his mind in its search for truth quickened him to hope, and made it easy for him to believe that new movements of mental activity in the world might be, at least, the beginnings of a further unfolding of the great revelation. He kept his intellectual powers in a state of alertness to meet every question as it might arise. He was glad of every opportunity for study which the changes of thought furnished. His own experience taught him how happy a thing it was to press on in thinking and learning, and how very happy a thing a revealing of more than the past had given always was. He was impelled to believe that the coming time would realize a similar experience. He would therefore go forward hopefully, looking everywhere for the light, and would lose no moment in doubt or fear lest the light might be too great for the truth.-Part of President Dwight's address at the funeral of President Noah Porter.