your dreams. You are startled at its depth-you are astonished at its extent. You watch the troubled waters as they approach the brink and see them whirl and face each other like armed columns, preparatory to their terrific leap; when down they plunge with a great noise; but like the dying dolphin, adorned with all the splendor of coloring—and are lost in the white and surging whirlpool beneath.

At the Tower you are in the midst of Niagara, and become, as it were, part and parcel of it. At first you drink in the scene with wondering and bewildered senses, till at length, awed by the deep and solemn voices of the Cataract, and the vibrations of the rocks and the air, the flying spray, and the wild turmoil of the waters-by the terrible grandeur of everything you see, and the mysterious power of all you imagine-you shrink before the omnipotent displays of Him who shaped it thus.

It is quite true, that this wonderful object cannot be talked about, nor written about, to any purpose: it must be seen, and more, it must be studied. The tongue and the pen are cunning, and the pencil hath its art, but these cannot reach its rainbows, its many tinted waters, its magnificence, and its terrors.

Of the two sides of the River, I liked the American by far the best. Aside from the superior life and bustle of the republican village, nature, while she has given to Canada the grander fall, has lavished over a wide prospect on the American side, all her boundless wealth of beauty and romance. Green fields, the verdant and

primeval trees, shadowy walks, and cool, refreshing seats, mingle in with the more lofty objects, and soften and subdue the scene. Besides, the view of the Horse-Shoe Fall itself, from the Terrapin Rocks and the Tower, is nearly, if not quite equal to the celebrated one from Table Rock; while the entire view from these points, I venture the opinion, will yet rank as the most imposing of the whole.

Niagara, when once we become acquainted with it, is capable of exercising a strange power of fascination over the mind; and the imaginative individual should not be surprised, if he find mere water, earth and air, changing in his conceptions, into a creature of life. No wonder that the savages adored it, and peopled it with invisible beings, and imagined it the abode of the Great Spirit. With me it will always remain a vision of beauty, closely associated with that glory, with which, in my fancy, I shadow and image the Supreme. I loved it as a fellow; I left it with regret. Its form still lingers before my eyes -its rushing voices still hymn in my ears. And often still, sleeping or waking, am I, in heart, among the cedars of Iris Island.

HOWELL'S LETTERS;

OR,

A GIFT BOOK OF THE OLDEN TIME.

GILBERT AINSLIE.

E

We read in some book the other day, an account of a supper, given by Ben Jonson, taken from Howell's Letters. The story was little flattering to the memory of the learned poet, as far as his reputation for modest merit was concerned. And, as from our childhood we had nourished a prejudice against all save the lyrical pieces of the doughty bard, we confess that we read with comparative pleasure any scandal, that justified our indisposition to take him into our confidence and affection. The narrative made us anxious to read the letters. For although Hallam, in his grave, judicial way, had pronounced a sentence upon the "Dodona's Grove” of the same author, that will send him down to an English posterity with small reputation, yet he had confessed that the letters were agreeable enough, although not deserving a place in the literary gallery that he had collected. For

ourselves we could not see how the epistles of a man, who lived in the closing days of King James, and throughout the disastrous reign of the first Charles, could be otherwise than agreeable, if he did nothing else save keep his eyes open, and put down whatever he could not help seeing.

History, with its sober maxims and profound observations, always weighed heavily upon our mind. In reading Hume, delightful as the style is, we confess that we never had any distinct idea of the persons, who played so conspicuous a part in the great tragedy of the Rebellion. They always looked to us like a train of hunters seen on the hill side in an October morning. The gray fog, illuminated by the rising sun into an expanding medium, makes all the company wear a giant aspect, while it seems to dwarf the natural scenery in which they stand. The distance deadens the sound of their voices, and instead of watching a train of gay sportsmen, who largely share the keen appetites and hearty pleasures that we enjoy, there seems to flit by us an unreal vision, a collection of fog-made phantasmagoria, in which we take the same interest, as we do in the shadows cast by a magic lantern. But letters are a very different affair. They have the interest that a narrative whispered into our own ear, by one that saw always possesses. We have that sort of pleasure and confidence in the narration, which is derived from the sense that our informant knows all about it, and that while the rest of the world is running wild in conjecture, actually losing

itself in the strange labyrinth of doubt, we have the secret clue, and thread all the windings with the assured step of certainty. It is this feeling-this conviction of knowing all about the matter, that gives the great charm to a novel. Few things equal the exquisite delight which we enjoy, when we see people of great discernment and intelligence, in every way attractive by grace and beauty, going wrong in their conjectures, and failing in their plans, when the whole consequences of the mingling of events are spread out before us as clearly as if they were marked on a map. When we study a history, we feel very much in the same state of perplexity that any character in a novel is presumed to be in. But when we read the letters of one who lived at the time, who heard all that the chief people said and did in their houses and at their tables, we may not in fact be one whit the wiser, but we feel so. And this feeling comes from our fancy that we know more about the people than the dignified relation of history will permit us to hear of. And from this knowledge comes our delusion of delight.

Everything now-a-days is philosophized. We do not know that it would be safe to state any fact, with a chance of having it listened to, unless it were made to harmonize with some particular theory of reflection or sensation. And in consequence, we have ventured to give a little explanation of our delight in letter writing, which, if it is not perfectly satisfactory, should be at least regarded as a tribute paid to the requisition of the times. And, theory apart, we think that we need not rely upon