The bell has toll'd-the wand they break- Oh, had I never lived! FAUST. MEPHISTOPHELES (appears in the door-way). Off! or your life will be but short: My coursers paw the ground, and snort! The sun will rise, and off they bound. MARGARET. Who is it rises from the ground? "Tis he!-the evil one of hell! What would he where the holy dwell? "Tis me he seeks! FAUST. To bid thee live. MARGARET. Justice of Heaven! to thee my soul I give! MEPHISTOPHELES (to FAUST). Come! come! or tarry else with her to die. MARGARET. Heaven, I am thine! to thy embrace I fly! Hover around, ye angel bands Save me! defy him where he stands. Henry, I shudder! 'tis for thee. MEPHISTOPHELES. She is condemn'd! VOICES FROM ABOVE. Is pardon'd! MEPHISTOPEHLES (to FAUST). Hence, and flee! [Vanishes with FAUST. MARGARET (from within). Henry! Henry!" "I admit," said Benedict, wiping his eyes, when the Nymph had finished, "that there is considerable power in some passages, and also that the scene you have just read is truly solemn and affecting; but still the whole drama is a very ill-constructed piece of work, and has faults that would have sunk it in England at the launching, and covered its author with irredeemable ridicule. Cats singing, and a hecat rubbing the devil's legs as if it had been a bachelor's Tom!" "Hush!" exclaimed the Nymph, laughing," recollect what you are yourself. Besides, bear in mind that the devil is a bachelor, and the first that was. To be serious, however, it cannot be questioned that, although there are in the productions of German genius, passages of the very highest order, and conceptions too of great originality, yet that, generally speaking, taking this drama as an admired work, absurdity and silliness are probably so superabundant in them, that the same things which please the Germans, and obtain honours and patronage among them, would be consigned to laughter among us. CHAP. XXXII. FALLS OF NIAGARA. "You were speaking to me lately," said the Bachelor," of the Falls of Niagara, as described by Mr Howison, in his Sketches of Upper Canada. I do not recollect the passage, indeed I may say that I have scarcely looked at the book.” "Then you have a treat to receive which you are not aware of," replied the Nymph: "it is a pleasing work, written with considerable taste and great purity of feeling, and no one who is not possessed of the same delicate sense of physical grandeur, and of the beauties of nature, should write about America. I never read a book relative to that country but which reminded me of the new-built suburbs of some of our great manufacturing towns. There is a traffic-like something about every description of the inhabitants, by which one is brought to think only of profits and of labour,-good and very necessary things, and highly essential to the prosperity of a state, but not just the sort of topics that delight in books of travels. Mr Howison, however, is an exception to the generality of travellers in America,-he gives us little of what, in the course of business and of political economy, is called valuable information, but he gives a great deal of very pleasing description ;-now it is description which I long for. Every body has heard and read of the vast scale on which nature has formed the scenery of America ;-but few accounts of its appearance present any image to the mind. It is easy to conceive, from the dimensions of the American mountains, lakes, and rivers, that they prodigiously exceed every thing of the kind in this country; but the moral excitement which they produce, when first seen, has never been well described. The best that I have almost ever met with is certainly Mr Howison's sketch of the Falls of Niagara. I had never before any just idea of their might and majesty; but he makes one feel something of what he himself experienced in beholding the magnificence of that unequalled scene. As you say you do not recollect the passage, I will read it to you." "Now that I propose to attempt a description of the Falls of Niagara, I feel myself threatened with a return of those throbs of trembling expectation, which agitated me on my first visit to these stupendous cataracts, and to which every person of the least sensibility is liable, when he is on the eve of seeing any thing that has strongly excited his curiosity, or powerfully affected his imagination. I fear I will not be able to convey a correct idea of the scene I mean to describe. Yet, anxious as I am that you should have just conceptions of it, I would not willingly have accepted your company when I first visited Niagara Falls,—as any object that did not enter into the real composition of the mighty scene, would have proved a source of painful interruption to me while engaged in contemplating its magnificent fea tures. "The form of Niagara Falls is that of an irregular semicircle, about three quarters of a mile in extent. This is divided into two distinct cascades by the intervention of Goat Island, the extremity of which is perpendicular, and in a line with the precipice over which the water is projected. The cataract on the Canada side of the river is called the Horseshoe, or Great Fall, from its peculiar form-and that next the United States the American Fall. "Three extensive views of the Falls may be obtained from three different places. In general, the first opportunity travellers have of seeing the cataract is from the high-road, which, at one point, lies near the bank of the river. This place, however, being considerably above the level of the Falls, and a good way beyond them, affords a view that is comparatively imperfect and unimposing. "The Table Rock, from which the Falls of the Niagara may be contemplated in all their grandeur, lies on an exact level with the edge of the cataract on the Canada side, and indeed forms a part of the precipice over which the water gushes. It derives its name from the circumstance of its projecting beyond the cliffs that support it like the leaf of a table. To gain this position, it is necessary to descend a steep bank, and to follow a path that winds among shrubbery and trees, which entirely conceal from the eye the scene that awaits him who traverses it. When near the termination of this road, a few steps carried me beyond all these obstructions, and a magnificent amphitheatre of cataracts burst upon my view with appalling suddenness and majesty. However, in a moment the scene was concealed from my eyes by a dense cloud of spray, which involved me so completely, that I did not dare to extricate myself. A mingled and thundering rushing filled my ears. I could see nothing except when the wind made a chasm in the spray, and then tremendous cataracts seemed to encompass me on every side, while below, a raging and |