We have repeated the excursion many times since the letters were written, preferring now to take the path up Mount Madison from the foot of Randolph Hill,—and always with increased interest in the scenery, and firmer conviction that the toil is better repaid than by any other tramp in the neighborhood of Mount Washington. And here we must close our description of the scenery and emotions gained by climbing so far above the level of New England. The best way for travellers, who wish by the bridle-paths to see the most of the range to which a day can introduce them, is to ascend from the Crawford House, and go down facing the noble towers of Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, on the Glen path. If one is going up and down the same path, the Glen road, we think, is preferable. If one is to cross the ridge, the scenery will be far more impressive to ascend from the Notch, and descend to the Glen, than to reverse the process. But we will go counter to our own advice, and descend to the plains from the summit of New Hampshire by the Crawford path, for the sake of this passage by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, that might otherwise be lost to us.

"The descent from the top of Mount Washington, towards the Gibbs House, had in it one half hour of extreme pleasure, and two hours of common pleasure. After leaving the summit hill I shot ahead of the fifteen or twenty in the party, and rode alone along the ridge that separates the eastern and western valleys. Beginning at your very feet as little crevices or petty gorges, the valleys widened, and deepened, and stretched forth, until on either side they grew dim in the distance, and the eye disputed with itself whether it was lake or cloud that spotted the horizon with silver. The valleys articulate with this ridge as ribs with a backbone. As I rode along this jagged and broken path, except of my horse's feet, there was not a single sound. There was no wind. There was nothing for it to sing through if there had been ever so much. There were no birds. There were no chirping insects. I saw no insects except spiders, which here, as everywhere, seemed well fed, and carried plump bellies. There was perfect peace, perfect stillness, universal brightness,

the fulness of vision, and a wondrous glory in the heaven, and over all the earth. The earth was to me as if it were unpeopled. I saw neither towns nor cities, neither houses nor villages, neither smoke, nor motion, nor sign of life. I stopped, and imagined that I was as they were who first explored this ridgy wilderness, and knew that, as far as eye could reach, not a white man lived. And yet these thoughts were soon chased away with the certainty that under that silvery haze were thousands of toiling men, romping children, mothers and maidens, and the world was going on below just as usual. How are the birds to be envied who make airy mountains by their wings! Could I rise six thousand feet above the ground, that were substantially to be on the mountain top. Then, when the multitude wearied us, and the soul would bathe in silence, we would with a few beats lift up through the air, and seek the solitude of space, and hide in the clefts of clouds, or ride unexplored ranges of crystal white cloudmountains, that scorn footsteps, and on whose radiant surfaces an army of feet would wear no path, leave no mark, but fade out as do steps upon the water!

"And so, for a half hour, I rode alone, without the rustle of leaves, -without hum or buzz,-without that nameless mixture of pipes, small and great, that fill the woods, or sing along the surface of the plains. There were no nuts to fall, no branches to snap, no squirrel to bark, no birds to fly out and flap away through the leaves. The matted moss was born and bred in silence. The stunted savins and cedars crouched down close to the earth from savage winds, as partridges crouch when hawks are in the air. The forests in the chasms and valleys below were like bushes, or overgrown moss. If there was any wind down there, if they shook their leaves to its piping, and danced when it bid them, it was all the same to me,-for motion or rest were alike at this distance.

"There is above every man's head a height into which he may rise, and, whether care and trouble fret below or tear on, they become alike silent and powerless. It is only our affections that mount up, and dwell with us, where bickerings and burdens never come."

THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.

The mountains indeed, that they may show their dignity and communicate their favors, require to be approached with great painstaking and peculiar respect. But no oriental king ever held himself in greater seclusion, or ever vouchsafed more dim and inadequate notions of his personal glory, than do they to those remote from their dwelling. The difference for the beholler of mountains, however, does not arise merely from the difficulty of receiving their forms without sight purely into the imagination, but also from the preparation of mind occasioned by the traveller's own long and laborious search after their grandeur. He pays, in his own exposure and toil and patience, the price of admission to their incomparable theatre. He gains gradually the mood to appreciate and enjoy them; and his mind expands to their breadth, and grows up to their exallation. A man in his easy-chair, reading a book or looking at a print, can but partially conceive their character. He treads in the edge of their imaginary shadow, instead of scaling their real height. Yet is it well worth the while to catch even hints and reflections of their wondrous substance which God made and upreared, to be seen and remembered and related among men.

The plains, all save a few barren deserts of sand, have yielded to the possession of human art. The hills, as in the old Scriptures they are called, are, indeed, everlasting. When we have left them, they cannot be forgotten or removed from our thought. As we still feel in our nerves the motion of the sea after we have planted our feet on the firm land, so the crests and hollows of the solid globe continue to make themselves felt in our mind. Away vastly they stretch in their earthy storm, their fixed fluctuation, their surge of primeval rock into the skies. Once seen, ever after remaining a new and glorious furniture of the mind, in their immense spread on the floor of the world, wondrously somehow, with no loss of size, transferred to the chambers of the imagination, they stand there, a mute, material warning against all moral narrowness and bigotry. Liberty and law, magnanimity and humility, inflexible sincerity and inexhaustible bounty, are their lessons. Purity ever descending from the heavens, in their flowing robes or frozen garb, is their perpetual example and admonition. And he that climbeth up their side, resolutely keeping the rough and devious yet ascending way, his prospect widening with every step as he goes on, till at the natural column's head, held up so mightily and so high, he trembles as between two worlds, will be reminded of his immortality.

REV. C. A. BARTOL.