VI.

NIAGARA, AGAIN.

AUGUST.

"Arethusa arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains

From cloud and from crag

And many a jag

Shepherding her bright fountains,

She leapt down the rocks,

With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams;

Her steps paved with green

The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams;

And gliding and springing

She went ever singing

In murmurs as soft as sleep:

The earth seemed to love her,

And heaven smiled above her

As she lingered toward the deep."

SHELLEY Would wonder, could he know that these

lines of his were quoted at Niagara. But Niagara is

no less beautiful than sublime, although I do not remember to have heard much of its beauty. It even suggests the personal feeling implied in such verses, and which, at a distance, seems utterly incompatible with the grandeur of the spot.

Nature has her partialities for places as well as persons, and as she thrones the Goethean or Websterian intellect upon "the front of Jove himself,” so she is quite sure to adorn the feet of her snowy Alps with the lustrous green of vineyards, the stately shade of chesnuts, or with the undulating sweep of lawn-like pastures. Here at Niagara she enamels the cliffs with delicate verdure, and the luminous gloom of the wood upon Goat Island invites to meditation with cathedral solemnity.

Nothing struck me more than the ease of access to the very verge of the Cataract. Upon the narrow point between the large and small American Falls you may sit upon the soft bank on a tranquil afternoon, dabbling your feet in the swiftly slipping water, reading the most dreamy of romances, and soothed by the huge roar, as if you were the Vicegerent of the Prophet, and the flow of the cool, smooth river, but the constant caressing of troops of slaves; and the roar of the Cataract but hushed voices singing their lord to sleep.

But if in your reading you pause, or if the low ripple of talk subsides, in which your soul was laved as your

frame in the gurgling freshness of wood-streams, and your eyes are left charmed upon the current—or if your dream dissolves and you behold the water, its own fascination is not less than that of the romance. It flows so tranquilly, is so unimpatient of the mighty plunge, that it woos and woos you to lay your head upon its breast and slide into dreamless sleep.

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time,

I have been half in love with easeful death-
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath :

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstacy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain

To thy high requiem a sod."

So sang Keats to the nightingale which sang to him; and whoever was really so enamoured could ill resist the seduction of the stream at the Falls. For in its might subsides all fear. It is a force so resistless, that it would need only a slight step, the merest overture of your will. If Niagara were in France, I am confident the Frenchmen would make suicide pic-nics to the Cataract. Unhappy lovers would take express trains and their "quietus make" where their dirge would be endless. The French, of course, would add

G

the melodramatic character of such an ending to its intrinsic charms, and even John Bull 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 a 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