VI. Liagara, Again. AUGUST. RETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian Mountains- Shepherding her bright fountains, She leapt down the rocks, Streaming among the streams: Her steps paved with green Which slopes to the Western gleams: 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 chestnuts, or the undulating sweep of lawnlike 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 |