vision lasted in full brilliancy. And, as it began to fade, the unbroken mass of Mount Madison was adorned with a lustrous purple sash, that fell athwart his breast from the shoulder to the waist. That was an investiture with knightly honor, by the sovereign sun, for which the mountain might well look high and proud. He seemed to say, is it not worth while to stand up here and be buffeted by gales, and bitten by frosts, and pelted by hail, and harassed by torrents, and bleached by snows, to get, now and then, such an honor as this for my patience and my scars,—a baldric fresh from the loom of light, and woven of its most imperial hues? So always the hero's tasks are paid by the hero's glory. Was not that spectacle a leaf from the gospel of nature, saying that the sunset hues, the peace and triumph of a noble life, more than atone for the noonday trials and the chilly clouds?

"I had never before seen the dolphin flushes of evening thrown upon either the Pilot Hills or the White Mountain range, and I had never anywhere seen them so ravishing and mystical in their pomp and charm. Was it not on account of my companion in the wagon, a stranger to the scenery, who arrived in the afternoon train? Did not nature know that all the richness of the shows she displayed to his eye would be woven again into splendors of eloquence that outrun her reach? Was not the sunset, was not that purple-belted pyramid, eager to become material for imagery through his passionate and poetic genius,-imagery sure to be vivid as that shining bloom, mystic as the interblending of those hues, soaring as that granite column, tender and pathetic, too, as that all-soothing and loving haze? No doubt, that spectacle will be transmuted, some day, in speech, or hymn, or sermon, into the richer purple and gold which genius. weaves out of memory and experience, by my gifted companion, whose broad fame as a Christian orator has recently been crowned by Harvard with honors that are modestly worn."

The life of man has wondrous hours
Revealed at once to heart and eye,
When wake all being's kindled powers,

And those who walk within the sphere,
The plot of earth's transfigured green,
Like angels walk, so high, so clear,
With ravishment in eye and mien.

For this one hour no breath of fear,
Of shame or weakness wandering near,

Can trusting hearts annoy:

Past things are dead, or only live
The life that hope alone can give,
And all is faith and joy.

'Tis not that beauty forces then

Her blessings on reluctant men,
But this great globe, with all its might,
Its awful depth and heavenward height,

Seems but my heart with wonder thrilling
And beating in my human breast;

My sense with inspiration filling,
Myself-beyond my nature blest.
Well for all such hours who know,
All who hail, not bid them go,
If the spirit's strong pulsation
After keeps its nobler tone,
And no helpless lamentation

Dulls the heart when rapture's flown;

If the rocky field of Duty,

Built around with mountains hoar,

Still is dearer than the Beauty

Of the sky-land's colored shore.

THE GLEN.

The road to the Glen lies through the forest between Mount Carter and Mount Madison along the brawling Peabody River. Rev. H.

White, in a book of remarkable incidents from the history of New England, tells us that a visitor from Massachusetts, by the name of Peabody, passed a night, many years ago, in an Indian's cabin on the height of land between the Saco and Androscoggin rivers. It must have been very near the spot where a clearing has been made in the Pinkham woods beyond the Glen House, under the walls of Tuckerman's ravine. The inmates of the Indian cabin, we are told, were roused in the night by a singular and dreadful noise, and in their terror rushed from the hut just in time to save their lives; for the cabin was swept away by a furious torrent that had burst from the hillside where there had been no spring before. No date is given in connection with the story. One of the mountain books informs us that this was, possibly, the origin of the branch of the Peabody River that runs in front of the Glen House. But as long as Washington, Adams, Carter, and Madison have received baptisms of rain and been sheeted with snow, the Peabody River has not ceased to wind through the Glen, and hurry with its increasing burden of water eight hundred feet down to the Androscoggin in Gorham. Doubtless a convulsion may have opened a pathway for some feeder of the Ellis River which flows into the Saco, or of the Peabody that pays tribute to the Androscoggin. But the river itself, whose curves we see and whose brawl we hear on the ride to the Glen House, was fed from the broad shoulders of Mount Washington, from the gorges of Jefferson, from the more even desolation of the pyramid of Madison, and from rains distilled more slowly through the deep forest soil of Carter, ages before any settler lifted an axe upon its bordering trees, or any Indian looked up from its banks with awe to the craggy seat of Manitou,—yes,

Ere Adam wived,
Ere Adam lived,
Ere the duck dived,

Ere the bees hived,

Ere the lion roared,

Ere the eagle soared.

We are able to give a sketch of the Peabody stream from a point

where it is watched by one of the great White Mountain summits. The following poem, which the accomplished author's kindness allows us to transfer to type from manuscript, was written after a morning visit from Gorham to the lower part of the Peabody, by Rev. William R. Alger of Boston:

And, kneeling in the taintless air,
I drink celestial blessings there.

Behold that guiltless bird! What brings
Him here? He comes to wash his wings.
Let me, too, wash my wings, with prayer,
And cleanse them from foul dust and care.

To one long time in city pent,

The lesson seems from heaven sent:-
For pinions clean yon bird takes care,
Of soul defiled do thou beware!

It is certainly a startling view that bursts upon us when we enter the Glen, either from Gorham or from Jackson, by the Pinkham road. No other public-house in the mountains, except those in North Conway, is so situated that Mount Washington is in view from its grounds. But North Conway is twenty miles distant. The Glen House is at the very base of the monarch; and Adams, Jefferson, Clay, and Madison bend around towards the east, with no lower hills to obstruct the impression of their height, so that from the piazza and front chamber windows of the hotel, the forest clothing of the five highest mountains of New England is distinctly seen, with all the clefts and chasms and the channelling of the rains, up to the bare ridge from which the desolate cones or splintered peaks ascend.

In the Glen we are a little too near the mountains for the best landscape effects; and as the sun sets behind the great ridge, we cannot see the splendors and changes of the evening light poured over the range as from Jefferson, Bethlehem, and Lancaster. The best time for the effects of light on the peaks is early in the morning, when the rocky portions of the ridge are often burnished with surpassing beauty, or from four to six in the afternoon of midsummer, when the lights and shadows are most powerfully contrasted. A misty day, too, is a great privilege, when the fogs are not heavy and sulky, but break around the peaks in the graceful witcheries of their languid and unceasing change; or when, in preparation for a storm, heavy clouds roll up the ravines and pack themselves between the cones of the ridge, and pour over into the caldron-like gulfs to whirl