the contrast of their ashy gloom with the new created world that soon spreads over and beneath us Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome, Yes, it is the semblance of a vaguely tinted ocean that is produced by the obscure and tender colors that stretch over hundreds of square miles to the horizon. What a privilege it would be to be removed far enough into space to observe the motion without losing the color of the globe, to see the morning break upon the Himalayas, and the vast blue of the ocean under the noon, and sunset flood the Andes with violet and gold,-to watch the creeping of spring over the northern latitudes, and Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth. This is the privilege with which the great German poet endows the angels. He makes them sing, in the opening hymn of "Faust," And fleetly, thought surpassing, fleetly The earth's green pomp is spinning round; With night terrific and profound. Surely, no man ever earned his sight seeing. It is reward enough for an angel to be able simply to read the geography of this globe through its delicate sapphire-tinted vesture, as it rolls noiselessly to bathe its checkered lands with light. The sight gives angels strength, though greater Than angels' utmost thought sublime; And all thy wondrous works, Creator, But why should we attempt in prose, or in random passages, any description of the view from Lafayette, when one of Bryant's poems interprets for us the relations of the mountain to the glen, the sharpness of its outlines, the beauty of the Pemigewasset that flows from its base to wind through fat farms, and the emotions which the com bined grandeur and loveliness inspire? It is difficult to believe that it was not written expressly for the spot. There, as thou stand'st, The haunts of men below thee, and around And down into the secrets of the glens, And streams, that with their bordering thickets strive Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice To separate its nations, and thrown down When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, Of winds, that struggle with the woods below, THE SACO VALLEY. WE once heard of a traveller who went down to New Orleans, every spring, and came North just fast enough to keep pace with the strawberries. He managed to rise on the degrees of latitude at even speed with the bounteous vines, and, ascending village by village, and city after city, plucked and ate, and thus extended the spring-time for his palate all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Montreal. How charming it would be to follow the fresh foliage and the apple blossoms in their northern march from Charleston to Eastport! What a rich year in which one should have nearly three months of the heart of spring, by riding thus on the crest of the earliest quickening wave, that breaks in green and white over the fields and farms of half a continent! We have sometimes duplicated the opening season of the year by a visit to the White Mountains through the Saco valley, after the blossoms had faded from the lower districts of New England. Indeed, about the last of May one can have a faint touch of the charm of Switzerland, by driving through North Conway and The Glen to Gorham. The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye, Dazzling and white! save where the bleak, Yet green are Saco's banks below, And belts of spruce and cedar show Dark fringing round those cones of snow. |