At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual repetition through all the spheres....

All great expression, which, on a superficial survey, seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes, after a while, to the faithful observer its own standard by which to appreciate it. Daily these proportions widened and towered more and more upon my sight, and I got, at last, a proper foreground for these sublime distances. Before coming away, I think I really saw the full wonder of the scene. After 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 poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil. For continually upon my mind came, unsought and unwelcome, images, such as never haunted it before, of naked savages stealing behind me with uplifted tomahawks; again and again this illusion recurred, and even after I had thought it over, and tried to shake it off, I could not help starting and looking behind me....

The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The fountain beyond the Moss Islands, I discovered for myself, and thought it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to leave, lest 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 a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the waterfall, copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the scene in congenial thought with its genius....

As I rode up to the neighbourhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached 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 name of an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which nature has erected to its God.

At last, slowly and thoughtfully I walked down to the bridge leading to Goat Island, and when I stood

upon this frail support, and saw a quarter of a mile of tumbling, rushing rapids, and heard their everlasting roar, my emotions overpowered me, a choking sensation rose to my throat, a thrill rushed through my veins, "my blood ran rippling to my finger's ends." This was the climax of the effect which the falls produced upon me-neither the American nor the British fall moved me as did these rapids. For the magnificence, the sublimity of the latter I was prepared by descriptions and by paintings. When I arrived in sight of them I merely felt, "ah, yes, here is the fall, just as I have seen it in picture." When I arrived at the terrapin bridge, I expected to be overwhelmed, to retire trembling from this giddy eminence, and gaze with unlimited wonder and awe upon the immense mass rolling on and on, but, somehow or other, I thought only of comparing the effect on my mind 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 passed on to the terrapin bridge. Every thing was changed, the misty apparition had taken off its many-coloured crown which it had worn by day, and a bow of silvery white spanned its summit. The moonlight gave a poetical indefiniteness to the distant parts of the waters, and while the rapids were glancing in her beams, the river below the falls was black as night, save where the reflection of the sky gave it the appearance of a shield of blued steel. No gaping tourists loitered, eyeing with their glasses, or sketching on cards the hoary locks of the ancient river god. All tended to harmonize with the natural grandeur of the scene. I gazed long. I saw how here mutability and unchangeableness were united. veyed the conspiring waters rushing against the rocky ledge to overthrow it at one mad plunge, till, like toppling ambition, o'erleaping themselves, they fall on t'other side, expanding into foam ere they reach the deep channel where they creep submissively away.

I sur

Then arose in my breast a genuine admiration, and an humble adoration of the Being who was the architect of this and of all. Happy were the first discoverers of Niagara, those who could come unawares upon this view and upon that, whose feelings were entirely their own.

THE first American ancestor of Mr. HEADLEY was the eldest son of an English baronet, who came to this country in consequence of a domestic quarrel, and ultimately refused the family estate, which is now held by Sir Francis Headley, the author of a work of some note on chemistry. Mr. Headley was born on the thirtieth of December, 1814, at Walton, in New York, where his father was settled as a clergyman. It is a wild and romantic spot, on the banks of the Delaware, and his early familiarity with its scenery doubtless occasioned much of his love of mountain climbing, and indeed his descriptive power. He commenced his studies with the law in view, but changed his plan, and after graduating, at Union College, became a student of theology, at Auburn. He was licensed in New York, and a church was offered him in that city, but his health was feeble, and his physician dissuaded him from attempting to preach. Unwilling, however, to abandon his profession without an effort, he took charge of a small church in Stockbridge, in Massachusetts, where he thought he could give himself the most favourable trial, but after two years and a half, broke down completely, and planned a European tour and residence for his recovery. He went to Italy in the summer of 1842, intending to spend the winter there, the summer in Switzerland, and the next winter in the East. The state of his health, however, led to some modification of his design: he remained in Italy only about eight months, travelled some time in Switzerland, passed through Germany and the Netherlands, went into Belgium, thence to France, then over England and Wales, and finally home, having been absent less than two years. His health being worse than when he went abroad, he gave up all idea of following his profession, and turned his attention to literature.

His first publication was a translation from the German, which appeared anonymously, in 1844. In the following year he gave to the press Letters from Italy and the Alps and the Rhine, and in 1846, Napoleon and his Marshals, and The Sacred Mountains.

Mr. Headley is one of the most promising of the youthful writers of this country. He has shown his capacity to write an agreeable book, and to write a popular one. His Letters from Italy is a work upon which a man of taste will be gratified to linger. It possesses the unfatiguing charms of perfect simplicity and truth. It exhibits a thousand lively traits, of an ingenuous nature, which, formed in a sincere and unsophisticated society, and then brought into the midst of the old world, retains all its freshness and distinctiveness, and observes with native intelligence every thing that is striking in the life and manners and scenery around it. There is a graceful frankness pervades the composition, which engages the interest of the reader in the author as well as in the subject. We meet, everywhere, the evidences of manly feeling, pure sympathies, and an honourable temper. In many of the passages there is a quiet and almost unconscious humour, which reminds us of the delicate raillery of The Spectator. The style is delightfully free from every thing bookish and commonplace; it is natural, familiar, and idiomatic. It approaches, as a work of that design ought to do, the animation, variety, and ease, of spoken language.

The work called Napoleon and his Marshals was written to be popular. The author obviously contemplated nothing but effect. In that point of view, it displays remarkable talent for accomplishing a proposed object. The figures and scenes are delineated with that freedom and breadth of outline, and in that vivid and strongly contrasted style of colouring, which are well calculated to attract and delight the people. If it were regarded as a work written to satisfy his own ideas of excellence, and as the measure of his best abilities, it could not be considered as adding any thing to his reputation. He has taken the subject up with ardour, but with little previous preparation: the work therefore indicates imperfect information, immature views of character, and many hasty and unconsidered opinions. The style has the same melodramatic exaggeration which

the whole design of the work exhibits. Yet unquestionably there is power manifested even in the faults of these brlliiant sketches. There is that exuberant copiousness of imagination and passion, which, if it be not admirable in itself, is interesting as the excess of youthful genius. We accept it as a promise, but are not satisfied with it as a production. If it be true, however, as has been stated, that some five thousand copies of this book have been disposed of in the few months that have elapsed since its publication, Mr. Headley has many motives to disregard the warnings which may be mingled with his triumph.

I am unwilling to trust myself in a detailed criticism of Mr. Headley's latest work,-The Sacred Mountains. He may readily be acquitted of intentional irreverence; but he has displayed a most unfortunate want of judgment, and a singular insensibility to the character of the subjects which he undertook to handle. The attempt to approximate and familiarize the incidents of the Deluge, to illustrate the Transfiguration by historical contrasts, and to heighten the agony and awe of the Crucifixion by the extravagancies of rhetoric, has produced an effect that is purely displeasing. As events in the annals of the world, those august occurrences "stand solitary and sublime," and are only to be viewed through the passionless ether of the inspired narrative. As mysteries of faith, and symbols of a truth before which our nature bows down, they re

SALERNO.

FROM LETTERS FROM ITALY.

THE great beauty of Salerno is its bay. We returned to our hotel, and, sitting down on a balcony that overlooked it, drank in the fresh evening air, and feasted on the quiet beauty of the scene. The sun went down over Amalfi, pencilling with its last beams the distant mountains that curved into the sea beyond Pæstum. Along the beach, on which the ripples were laying their lips with a gentle murmur, a group of soldiers in their gay uniform was strolling, waking the drowsy echoes of evening with their stirring bugle-notes. The music was sweet; and at such an hour, in such a scene, doubly so. They wandered carelessly along, now standing on the very edge of the sand where the ripples died, and now hidden from sight behind some projecting point where the sound confined, and thrown back, came faint and distant on the ear, till emerging again into view, the martial strain swelled out in triumphant notes till the rocks above and around were alive with echoes. It was a

We think so highly of Mr. Headley's natural powers, that we feel a concern in their proper direction and development. The fascination of strong writing, the love of rhetorical effect, have proved the "torva voluptas" by which American genius has often been betrayed and sacrificed. It is to be hoped that Mr. Headley will recover in time from the dangerous intoxication. He should remember that the spirit of literary art is essentially natural, simple, and calm; that it is advanced, not by sympathy with the passions of the multitude, but by lonely communion with that high idea of excellence, which is pure, permanent, and sacred; that it dwells not in excitement, and the fervent endeavour after an outward result, but in the quiet yet earnest development of those inward instincts of grace and beauty which are the creative energy of genius. Mr. Headley's first move in literature was a commendable and successful one, and he could not do better for his true fame than to retrace his steps, and recover the line of his earliest efforts.

-Besides the works above mentioned Mr. Headley has published several orations and many able articles in the reviews.

dreamy hour; and just then, as if on purpose to glorify the whole, the full moon rose up over the sea and poured its flood of light over the waters, tipping every ripple with silver, and making the whole beach, where the water touched it, a chain of pearls. One by one my friends had dropped away to their rooms till I was left alone.... Every vagrant sound had ceased, except the very faint murmur of the swell on the beach. The gray old mountains were looking down on Salerno, and Salerno on the sea; and all was quiet as night ever is when left alone. And yet, quiet and peaceful as it was, it had been the scene of stirring conflicts. There were the moonbeams sleeping on the wall against which Hannibal had once thundered with his fierce Africans; and along that beach the wild war-cry of the Saracen had rung, and women and children lain in slaughtered heaps. But the bold Saracen and bolder African had passed away, while the sea and the rocks remained the same. I turned to my couch, not wondering the poets of the Augustan age sang so much and so sweetly of Salerno.

NAPLES.

FROM THE SAME.

TO-NIGHT we arrived from Castellamare. Our road wound along the bay-near Pompeii, through Torre del Greco, into the city. The sky was darkly overcast-the wind was high and angry, and the usually quiet bay threw its aroused and rapid swell on the beach. Along the horizon, between the sea and sky, hung a storm-cloud blacker than the water. Here and there was a small sailing-craft, or fisherman's boat, pulling for the shore, while those on the beach were dragging their boats still farther up on the sand, in preparation for the rapidly-gathering storm. There is always something fearful in this bustling preparation for a tempest. It was peculiarly so here. The roar of the surge was on one side; on the other lay a buried city-a smoking mountain; while our very road was walled with lava that cooled on the spot where it stood. The column of smoke that Vesuvius usually sent so calmly into the sky, now lay on a level with the summit, and rolled rapidly inland, before the fierce sea-blast. It might have been fancy; but, amid such elements of strength, and such memories and monuments of their fury, it did seem as if it wanted but a single touch to send valley, towns, mountain, and all, like a fired magazine into the air. Clouds of dust rolled over us, blotting out even the road from our view; while the dull report of cannon from Naples, coming at intervals on our ears, added to the confusion and loneliness of the scene. As we entered the city and rode along the port, the wild tossing of the tall masts as the heavy hulls rocked on the waves, the creaking of the timbers, and the muffled shouts of seamen, as they threw their fastenings, added to the gloom of the evening; and I went to my room, feeling that I should not be surprised to find myself aroused at any moment by the rocking of an earthquake under me. The night did not disappoint the day, and set in with a wildness and fury, that these fire-countries alone exhibit. My room overlooked the bay and Vesuvius. The door opened upon a large balcony. As I stood on this, and heard the groaning of the vessels below, reeling in the darkness, and the sullen sound of the surge, as it fell on the beach, while the heavy thunder rolled over the sea, and shook the city on its foundations, I felt I would not live in Naples. Ever and anon a vivid flash of lightning would throw distant Vesuvius in bold relief against the sky, with his forehead completely wrapped in clouds that moved not to the blast, but clung there, as if in solemn consultation with the mountain upon the night. Overhead the clouds were driven in every direction, and nature seemed bestirring herself for some wild work. At length the heavy raindrops began to fall, one by one, as if pressed from the clouds; and I turned to my room, feeling that the storm would weep itself away.

THE MISERERE AT ROME.

FROM THE SAME.

THE night on which our Saviour is supposed to have died is selected for this service. The Sistine Chapel is dimly lighted, to correspond with the gloom of the scene shadowed forth.... The ceremonies commenced with the chanting of the Lamentations. Thirteen candles, in the form of an erect triangle, were lighted up in the beginning, representing the different moral lights of the ancient church of Israel. One after another was extinguished as the chant proceeded, until the last and brightest one at the top, representing Christ, was put out. As they one by one slowly disappeared in the deepening gloom, a blacker night seemed gathering over the hopes and fate of man, and the lamentation grew wilder and deeper. But as the Prophet of prophets, the Light, the Hope of the world, disappeared, the lament suddenly ceased. Not a sound was heard amid the deepening gloom. The catastrophe was too awful, and the shock too great to admit of speech. He who had been pouring his sorrowful notes over the departure of the good and great seemed struck suddenly dumb at this greatest wo. Stunned and stupified, he could not contemplate the mighty disaster. I never felt a heavier pressure on my heart than at this moment. The chapel was packed in every inch of it, even out of the door far back into the ample hall, and yet not a sound was heard. I could hear the breathing of the mighty multitude, and amid it the suppressed half-drawn sigh. Like the chanter, each man seemed to say, "Christ is gone, we are orphans all orphans!" The silence at length became too painful. I thought I should shriek out in agony, when suddenly a low wail, so desolate and yet so sweet, so despairing and yet so tender, like the last strain of a broken heart, stole slowly out from the distant darkness and swelled over the throng, that the tears rushed unbidden to my eyes, and I could have wept like a child in sympathy. It then died away as if the grief were too great for the strain. Fainter and fainter, like the dying tone of a lute, it sunk away as if the last sigh of sorrow was ended, when suddenly there burst through the arches a cry so piercing and shrill that it seemed not the voice of song, but the language of a wounded and dying heart in its last agonizing throb. The mul titude swayed to it like the forest to the blast. Again it ceased, and broken sobs of exhausted grief alone were heard. In a moment the whole choir joined their lament and seemed to weep with the weeper. After a few notes they paused again, and that sweet, melancholy voice mourned on alone. Its note is still in my ear. I wanted to see the singer. It seemed as if such sounds could come from nothing but a broken heart. Oh! how unlike the joyful, the triumphant anthem that swept through the same chapel on the morning that symbolized the resurrection.

MR. MATHEWS was born in New York in 1815, and was graduated at the university of that city when about twenty years of age. He soon after entered upon the study of the law, and in due time was admitted to practise as an attorney and counsellor. His attention, however, has been mainly given to literature, and probably no one of our younger authors has written more largely. From 1835 to 1838 he was a contributor to the Knickerbocker and American Monthly magazines, in which appeared some of his best sketches of life and manners. In 1838 he published The Motley Book, a series of tales and sketches, of a humorous character. In 1839 he delivered an Address on the True Aims of Life, before the alumni of the New York University; and in the same year appeared his Behemoth, a Legend of the Mound Builders, in which he endeavoured to make the gigantic relics which have been discovered in the central parts of the continent subservient to the purposes of the imagination. The conception was a fine one, but the execution, although the work embraces some good passages, was generally bad, evincing a want of both taste and power. In 1840 he gave the public The Politicians, a Comedy, in five acts, designed to exhibit the various humours attending the election of an alderman in the city of New York, and in the same year, with his friend Mr. E. A. Duyckinck, a man of much cultivation and an agreeable style of writing, he commenced Arcturus, a monthly magazine, which was continued a year and a half. In its pages appeared his Wakondah, the Master of Life, a poetical fragment founded upon an Indian tradition; and The Career of Puffer Hopkins, a novel, of which three or four editions have since been issued. In 1842 he published several pamphlets on International Copyright, and in the following year, Poems on Man, in the American Republic, which, though unfinished and rough, are terse, and evince reflection and manly feeling. In 1843 also appeared a complete edition of his various writings, up to that period. His last work, Big Abel and the Little

Manhattan, was published in Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, in 1845.

The longest, most ambitious, and best known of the works of Mr. Mathews, is The Career of Puffer Hopkins. The object appears to be to illustrate the every-day life of the middling and lower classes in New York. The main story is that of the public advancement of a vulgar politician; but it is interrupted by many scenes and incidents that in no way assist in arriving at the conclusion, in which are introduced the inhabitants and frequenters of the dens of crime and wretchedness in the city. The book has some merits. The characters are drawn with considerable vigour and distinctness, and they are very well sustained, in dialogue and action. But Puffer Hopkins is no more a representative of life in New York than it is of life in Dublin. From beginning to end it has scarcely a gleam of vraisemblance. Its whole spirit is low and base, and as untrue as it is revolting. If, as the author intimates in his preface, it was his hope to produce a book "characteristic and national in its features," surely no hope was ever more completely disappointed.

Big Abel and the Little Manhattan is a suggestive parallel between the present and primitive condition of New York. A greatgrandson of the navigator Hudson, and the heir of the last chief of the Mannahatoes, are supposed to have in contemplation a suit against the corporation of the city, for the whole of its territory, and are represented as wandering about its streets and squares, agreeing upon a division of the property they expect to acquire.

The style of Mr. Mathews is unnatural, and in many places indicates a mind accustomed to the contemplation of vulgar depravity. Who would think of finding such names as "Hobbleshank," " Greasy Peterson," "Fishblatt," or "Flab," in Washington Irving or Nathaniel Hawthorne? but they are characteristic of Puffer Hopkins. His language is sometimes affectedly quaint, and when more natural, though comparatively fresh, it is rude and