Summer on the Lakes, in 1843

, June

his magnificent prologue to the, as yet, unknown drama. Yet I, like others, have little to say where the spectacle is, for once, great enough to fill the w

making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haun

bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its mightiest, moves in gales and

t the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the

anorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position and proportions of all objects

ndered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment, he said approvingly

done, "up the Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boots," I felt here; it looks really well enough, I fel

awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire an undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence. The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were pour

nd the light and shade. From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced pictur

walked close up to the fall, and, after looking at it a moment, with an air a

g to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will no

k more imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just below the great fall; but the slight circles that

been swallowed by the cataract, is like to rise suddenly t

I might never see it again. After I found it permanent, I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little waterfall beyond, nature seems, as she often does, to have made a study for some larger design. She delights in this,-a sketch within a sketch, a dream within

not sympathize with such an apprehension: the spectacle is capable to swallow up all su

e former, white, pink, green, purple, copying the rainbow of the fall, and fit to make a garland for its presiding deity when he walks the land, fo

easily as the stars. I will be here again beneath some flooding July moon and sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbo

ch must, I think, have come upon him when he sank the first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege. He told us all about the Americ

e borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and its plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at that moment striding before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver shouted, "Look there!" an

thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer. Proba

, when once deeply penetrated, they will let themselves so easily be borne away by the general stream of things, to live any where and any how. But there

one might as soon think of asking for a gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should w

least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like, that interested me. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning after he had seen it, his doubt as to the possibility of its being stil

another here, as being much better than anything

t of this manifestation of the Eternal. But one should go to such a scene prepared to yield entirely to its influences, to forget one's little self and one's little mind. To see a misera

ached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the na

ind with what I had read and heard. I looked for a short time, and then with almost a feeling of disappointment, turned to go to the other points of view to see if I was not mistaken in not feeling any surpassing emotion at this sight. But from the foot of Biddle's stairs, and the middle of the river, and from below the table rock, it was still "barren, barren all." And, provoked with my stupidity in feeling most moved in the wrong place, I turned away to the hotel, determined to set off for Buffalo that afternoon. But the stage did not go, and, after nightfall, as there was a splendid moon, I went down to the bridge, and leaned over the parapet, where the boiling rapids came down in their might. It was grand, and it was also gorgeous; the yellow rays of the moon made the broken waves appear like auburn tresses twining around the black rocks. But they did not inspire me as before. I felt a foreboding of a mightier emotion to rise up and swallow all others, and I p

n that, whose feelings were entirely their own. With what gusto does Father Hennepin describe "this great downfall of water," "this vast and prodigious cadence of water, which falls down after a surprising and astonishing