ber it well; and so do all who have sojourned, transiently or long, among the elysian bowers of New-Haven. Charming DE F! The queen of Commencements, and Junior Exhibitions! Cynosure of sophomore eyes, with an atmosphere about thee of music and the frankincense of youth! Idol of unhewn and wondering freshmen, who gaze at thee as they would at a distant star, moving in brightness through the dark blue depths of heaven! Who, wedded and blessed, or single and hipped, but would look upon thee as a sumptuous and beauteous picture? No one, be it confidently averred, in whose mind a taste for grace and loveliness were not clean gone forever.' Thou art associated in my memory with the sun-bows and green woods and waters of Niagara- and art destined there to last,

'Unto thylke day i' the which I shall creepe
Into my sepulchre.'

ONE thing will impress you, as you wander about Goat-Island. After you have stood upon the high rocky tower, (connected by a quivering plank, as it were, with the awful edge of the precipice,) and looked for miles around you, upon a waste of stormy waters, plunge at once into the quiet and wooded paths of the island. Travel on-on- on. Now, you may fancy that you are alone, and Niagara out of hearing. Is it so? Pause a moment. There comes through the thick leaves and branches around you, though you are far from the Fall, a many-toned and hollow voice, which makes every leaf to tremble. The light stems thrill to the rushing breath of the cataract. Yet it is not sudden, like the sound of a cannon, or the pealing of the thunder: it is constant, yet changeful; heavy and solemn; yet at times, fairy and musical: but it fills all the air. There is no pause - no cessation no stay. The roar is eternal. It is the utterance of the GoD who lifted that horrid ledge into heaven, and stretched that awful chasm for leagues toward the frozen pole.

FAIL not, tourist, to visit the Cave of the Winds, and to go southwardly from the BIDDLE stair-case, under the American ledge. Mind not the tempest which will sweep over you occasionally from the distant cataract, in a cloud of spray on the wings of the gale. There is inspiration in the heart, as you inhale the awful hymn-notes of the torrent, and the freshness of that watery air. It is like breathing upon a high mountain in winter, above a wide plain, where a wider stretch of white fades at last, on the edge of the horizon, into an universal blue. Look up, ever and anon. How fearfully those heavy pines look over the ledges, at the height of many a hundred feet! There the blue sky looks down upon you, and the fleecy cloudchild of the waters and the morning- unfolds its skirts of fleecy gold! Beautiful — awful-impressive scene!

THEY told us a good story of an Irishman and Scotchman, from Canada, who came on the American side last winter to settle an ancient grudge by fisticuffs. They fought like brave men, long and well;' long hung the contest doubtful; and the by-standers wist not which should prevail-whether or shamrock or thistle. At last the antagonists fell to the ground; they rolled to the edge of the river; one, minus his linsey-woolsey coat-tail, clung to some shrubbery on the precipitous bank; the other fell to the distance of sixty feet, saving his life by striking among the thick boughs of a parasitical tree growing out of the rock, and festooned with thick vines, the seed of which some wandering breeze had wafted to a fissure in the rock, where it had been nourished by the presence of leaf-dust and spray, until it had flourished into strong and vigorous fertility. The discomfitted warrior was drawn up by a rope, let down for his aid, and hooked to his wounded inexpressibles, having fallen only a small part of the distance to the river's bed.

A DAY or two, (employed in good dinners at the Cataract House, a personal inspection and liberal purchases of Indian gimcrackeries on the island, leave-takings with friends, appointments for Saratoga, Rockaway, Trenton, or Newport,) can be passed richly at Niagara. If you have an ounce of poetry about you, reader, remain there until you can go the whole circuit on every side, and in every quarter ALONE. Go out, free from all human presence, and hold communion with your God. So shall you bring away with you cherished and kindling thoughts, never to die.

WE bowled briskly away from the Cataract Hotel, one rainy afternoon the mud was up to the axle of our extra; and as we wheeled around an opening through the thick shrubbery, on our way to Lewiston, not far from The Devil's Hole a polite name given to a horrid chasm in the rocky wall which bounds Niagara on either side, from Queenston to the Pavilion I caught my parting view of The Wonder. Down rolled that heavy stretch of wide and foaming the spray rising in clouds from its base-the wreathing vapors making themselves wings for the wind, and ready to sail away, like airy messengers, perhaps to be steeped in sunlight over Lake Erie so that they which but a little while before were mounting with thunder in their bosoms, could soar away and be at rest.

waters

As you journey to the North, Dan Tourist, forget not to pause on the brow of that long hill which overlooketh the old town of Queenston, in Canada, the monument of BROCK, and eke the town of Lewiston, on the republican side. As we neared this spot, the sun broke out from his hiding place, and diffused over the landscape, for many, many leagues, a sweet and melancholy smile. Magnificent sight! The monument, arose like a shaft of an ebony, against a sky of the

richest crimson. Old Niagara went meandering onward to Ontario, like a vast serpent of gold, creeping through a landscape of surpassing loveliness. The Mother and the Daughter of two countries seemed brought together in loving propinquity; and the hills afar, the vales between, the rain drops glittering on the trees around,' and the trembling leaves, gave melody to the breeze and beauty to the eye.

BEFORE We supped, I opened the window of our hostelrie at Lewiston, to catch the last sound of the Falls. On the fitful gusts, and swayed to full or gentle modulations by the creeping tides of air that swept through the twilight, came the voice of many waters.' Harp sublime! Anthem unending! Organ of the almighty! I seem to hear thee still!

Ir you visit Niagara, I think I would perform the journey in October. Oh, when the trees are clothed in their many-colored autumnal robes when the day-god goes to his rest as a monarch goes to his slumbers, drawing around him his curtains of purple and gold-when the mellow fruits drop richly from the trees in thine orchard; when the honey-locust leaf, or ash, deep crimsoned,' falls to the ground;

'When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the leaves are still,
And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,'

then go to Niagara. You will return with the chastening solemnity of the season upon you; with emblems of eternity in your mind; with remembered whispers of a God sounding in your ear, and with thanks to Him

'Who made the world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains.'

STOOD at the door of the Cataract Hotel, on the American side, while the postillion was placing their 'travelling dress' upon his cattle, and watched a handsome squaw trudge through the heavy rain, with a papoose, or young baby, at her back, covered with a white blanket, and suspended by a wampum belt from her forehead. How statelily she stepped! She had the walk of an empress, as she bounded away into the woods. Poor soul! Probably on her way to her lonely wigwam, to lament in the autumn-when the sun goes down in an ocean of rainbow-colored foliage, and the wilderness echoes to the moan of the dying year- the departing glories of her

race

Like thee, thou sun, to die!'

EXCEEDINGLY amused at the air and manner of a decided loafer, a sentimentalist withal, and a toper, who had come out of his way from Buffalo to see the Falls. Landlord!' said he, to the Boniface

of the Cataract, and you, gentlemen, who stand on this porch, witnessing this pitiless rain, you see before you one who has a tempest of sorrows a-beatin' upon his head continually. Wanst I was wo'th twenty thousand dollars, and I driv the saddling profession. Circumstances alters cases: now I wish for to solicit charity. Some of you seems benevolent, and I do believe I am not destined to rank myself among those who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say all is barren. No-I scorn to brag - but I am intelligent beyond my years, and my education has been complete. I have read Wolney's Ruins, Marshall's Life of Washington, and Pope's Easy on Man, and most of the literature of the day, as contained in the small newspapers. But the way I'm situated at present, is scandalous. The fact is, my heart is broke, and I'm just Ishmaelizing about the globe, with a sombre brow, and a bosom laden with wo. Who will help me speak singly, gentlemen who will 'ease my griefs, and drive my cares away?' as Isaac Watts says, in one of his devotional poems.'

No answer was returned. A general laugh arose. The pride of the mendicant was excited: rage got the better of his humility; and shaking his fist in the face of the by-standers, he roared out:

'You're all a pack of poor, or'nary common people. You insult honest poverty; but I do not hang my head for a' that,' as Burns says. I will chastise any man here, for two three-cent drinks of Monagohale whiskey: yes, though I have but lately escaped shipwreck, coming from Michigan to Buffalo, and am weak from loss of strength; yet I will whip the best of you. Let any on ye come over to the Black Rock Rail-road Dee-pott, and I'll lick him like a d-n!'

Never mind that part of it,' said one;

wreck.'

tell us about the ship

'Ah!' he continued, 'that was a scene! Twenty miles out at sea, on the lake · the storm bustin' upon the deck the waves, like mad tailors, making breeches over it continually the lightnings a-bustin' overhead, and hissing in the water the clouds meeting the earth-the land just over the lee-bow-every mast in splintersevery sail in rags women a-screechin' farmers' wives, emigratin' to the west, calling for their husbands and hell yawnin' all around! A good many was dreadfully sea-sick; and one man, after casting forth every thing beside, with a violent retch, threw up his boots. Oh, gentlemen, it was awful! At length came the last and destructivest billow. It struck the ship on the left side, in the neighborhood of the poop and all at wanst, I felt something under us breakin' away. The vessel was parting! One half the crew was drowned passengers was praying, and commending themselves to heaven. I alone escaped the watery doom.'

And how did you manage to redeem yourself from destruction?' was the general inquiry.

Why, gentlemen, the fact is, I seen how things was a-goin', and I took my hat and went ashore!'

The last I saw of this Munchausen, was as our coach wheeled away. He had achieved a 'drink,' and was perambulating through the mud, lightened, momentarily, of his sorrows.

1837.]

Lewiston

-Farewell Voice of the Cataract.

69

As you journey to the North, from Niagara to Lewiston, you catch, ever and anon, through the leafy screen of the trees, distant views of the Great Cataract. In the pauses of your carriage wheels, come the thunder of the torrent and the dimness of the spray. On your left, there is a great gulf fixed,' to which the Gulf of Hades might be imagined to have resemblance. Now and then, crowned with glittering rainbows, you see the Falls, like the 'great white sheet let down from heaven,' as beheld of old in the portable larder that met the apostle's startled vision. Then a thickening cloud of spray, filled with thunderings and voices,' hides it from your view. Mile after mile, you continue your tour, the great Gulf still at your side, the complaining river rolling apparently leagues beneath you--horrid chasms and frowning precipices, around whose bases the foaming waves eddy and howl- until, by and by, you ascend that incomparable hill which overlooks the scenes of Lewiston and Queenston. The delighted eye beholds the sinking current grow calmer and calmer; the blue vistas of Canadian woods and plains stretch themselves in blending colors and undulations to the far and fairy radius of the horizon; and as the river rolls onward to the Ontario, like a huge serpent of gold winding through the landscape as the tall shaft of BROCK's monument paints its delicate outline against the evening sky, and the fainter sound of the distant cataract is taken on the freshening wind, among the far-off cedars, waving against a gush of farewell crimson in the west the scene is inspiration, and the place becomes religion.

WHILE Our Supper was in preparation at Lewiston, I opened the window which looked toward the South, in the direction whence we had come. Haply, thought I, the cataract may yet send its farewell voice to my ear. I listened attentively, auribus erectis, and solemnly, on the swelling gusts and creeping murmurs of the evening, as they rose and fell, 'swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,' came the majestic hum and air-tremble of the Falls! How impressive was that sound! Throned afar in the forest sceptered with its gorgeous coronet of lunar rainbows-its regal impulse rushing through the darkness on the wings of the wind Niagara lifted to heaven its vocal and eternal anthem! How many generations, thought I, shall come and go- how many loving hearts go back to dust how many lips be dumb in death,

and their soft breath with pain

Be yielded to the elements again,

before Niagara shall be tuneless, or its stormy tones be muffled ! Power, more than kingly! Voice, louder and steadier than the clangour of battle, or the peal of the ephemeral earthquake, ingulfing plains and cities! In the language of the bard, 'Thy days are everlasting!' Thou camest from the palm of Him who hath measured the earth, and who sees the pestilence stain the noon-day at his bidding! Who that breathes, will ever behold the consummation of thy destiny? None! Autumn after autumn, with its gold-dropping