might forego the satisfaction of a leap from the Duke of York's column for a Niagaran annihilation.

As you sit, chatting and wondering, upon the bench at this point, you are sure to hear the sad romance of two years since. A young man caught up a child and swung it to and fro over the water only a few feet from the precipice, laughing gaily and feigning fright, when suddenly the child sprang from his arms into the rapid. He stepped in instantly, for the water near the shore is not more than two feet deep, and caught her again in his arms. But the treacherous stones at the bottom were so slippery with the constant action of the water, that, although he could resist the force of the stream, he could not maintain his foothold, and was swept with the child in his arms, and his betrothed mistress watching him from the bank, directly over the fall. The man who told me the story was musician and had still a low tone of horror in his voice; for he said that, as the young man came to the Point, he told him there was to be a dance that evening and that he must have his music ready. They had scarcely parted, his words were yet ringing in his ears, when he heard a curdling shriek of terror, and knew that "somebody had gone over the Falls."

Niagara has but one interest, and that absorbs all attention. The country around is entirely level, and

covered with woods and

grain fields. It is

very thinly pop

ulated; civi

lization seems to

have made

small inroad

upon the pri

meval grand

eur of the spot.

Standing upon the
western end of Goat
Island and looking up
the stream the wooded
banks stare back upon
you as in a savage si-
lence of folded arms and
scornful eyes. They are not
fair woods, but dark forests.

They smite you only with a sense of magnificent space, as I fancy the impression of Rocky Mountain scenery, but which is akin to that of chaos.

From the spot where stood the young English hermit's cottage, upon Goat Island, you front the Canada shore. But the name dies along your mind almost without echo, even as your voice might call into those dark forests, but melt from them no human

response. Canada! The name is a mist in the mind. Slowly and vaguely a few remembrances shape themselves. Shadowy and terrible traditions of hopeless and heartless Indian wars, which tapped the choicest veins of French and English blood, but gave no glory in return, half tell themselves in the mind, like the croning of a beldame in the chimney

corner.

Slowly from the red mist of that vague remembrance rise the names of Wolfe and Montgomery and Montcalm, heroes where heroism little availed, for the Indian element mingled in the story, and where the Indian is, there nobility and chivalry are not. You look across the rapids upon a country which has made no mark in history; where few men love to live, except those who have little choice; where the towns are stagnant and few; upon a country whose son no man is proud to be, and the barrenness of the impression somewhat colors your feelings of Niagara, for the American shore is wild too, although the zealous activity of the little village at the Falls, and the white neatness of Lewiston, below, relieve the sense of desolation upon the distant banks.

The beauty of Niagara is in its immediate neigh borhood. It is upon Goat Island-upon the cliffs over which hangs the greenest verdure-in the trees that lean out and against the Rapids, as if the forest

and which overhang and
dip, suffering their youngest,
and softest leaves to thrill in
the trembling frenzy of the touch
of Niagara. It is in the vivid con-
trast of the repose of lofty trees and
the whirl of a living river-and in the

contrast, more singular and subtle, of twinkling, shimmering leaves, and the same magnificent madness. It is in the profuse and splendid play of colors in and around the Cataract, and in the thousand evanescent fancies which wreathe its image in the mind as the sparkling vapor floats, a rainbow, around the reality. It is in the flowers that grow quietly along the edges of the precipices, to the slightest of

which one drop of the clouds of spray that curl from the seething abyss is the sufficient elixir of a long and lovely life.

Yet for we must look the Alpine comparison which is suggested to every one who knows Switzerland, fairly in the face-the Alps are more terrible than Niagara. The movement and roar of the Cataract, and the facility of approach to the very plunge, relieve the crushing sense of awfulness which the silent, inaccessible, deadly solitudes of the high Alps inspire. The war of an avalanche heard in those solemn heights, because beginning often and ending beyond the point that human feet may ever tread, is a sound of dread and awe like that of the mysterious movement of another world, heard through the silence of our own.

Besides, where trees grow, there human sympathy lingers. Doubtless it is the supreme beauty of the edges of Niagara, which often causes travellers to fancy that they are disappointed, as if in Semiramis they should see more of the woman than of the queen. But, climbing the Alps, you leave trees below. They shrink and retire. They lose their bloom and beauty. They decline from tenderness into toughness; from delicate, shifting hues into sombre evergreen-darker and more solemn, until they are almost black, until they are dwarfed and scant and wretched, and