day, I saw a lady who was sitting on the bank,—as safe a seat as an arm-chair by the fireside,-convulsively turn away from the scene, and clasp the ground. Yet the water falls so tranquilly that I should not be afraid to stand in the flood, near the bank where it takes the leap. I tried the force of the water there, and found it very moderate. After completing the ascent, Mrs. F. and I were standing looking at the rapids, when a letter was handed to me. Somebody had actually been mundane enough to remember the post-office, and to go to it! I was glad it was not I. Further sins against the spirit of the day were presently committed. Of course, I cannot say what time it was, but, by the heat, probably about the middle of the day, when the ladies were sitting on the stem of a tree, in a tiny island, amidst the roaring rapids,—an interesting love-story being their topic,and the gentlemen were seen approaching with bread, biscuits, cheese, ale, and lemonade. They had not even forgotten glasses. We ate our dinner on a bench under the trees,-all except Charley, who niched himself in an ash, which parted from the root into many stems. The boy looked like a beautiful fairy, and for his own part declared that this was far better than dining in any house.

We dawdled hours away in Goat Island; now lying on the grassy bank with our feet almost into the rapids; now fanning ourselves in the translucent

green shades of the wood, among rabbits and goats, and then gathering new wild flowers from the multitude which blossomed under our feet; the roar of the Falls solemnizing all. The timid ones sat in the alcove erected above the Horse Shoe Fall, while the rest went down to the Terrapin Bridge and Tower. The tower, forty feet high, is built on rocks in the midst of the rapids, and its summit affords an absolutely complete view of the scene. The bridge is built on logs which extend from rock to rock in the rapids, to the edge of the precipice, the flood gushing beneath in a dizzying whirl. At my first visit, this bridge had been complete, and to all appearance secure. I had stood on its extreme point, which projected over the precipice. There I hung suspended above the fall,—standing in the air on the extremity of a beam, and without any suspicion that I was not perfectly safe. It was there that I learned some of the secrets of the cataract. I saw there what can be seen nowhere else, -the emerald columns broken and forced up, and falling again in gushes of diamonds, which again were melted into wreaths of dazzling snow. It was now too late to see this any more. broken down, some way from the

The bridge had end; the hand

rail was gone, and the brink of the precipice was no longer accessible. We got to the tower, however, and further; and Charley and his father

stepped down from the bridge among the rocks, and stood amidst the water, very near the brink of the great Fall! Their position was shown to be perfectly safe by the verdure of these rocks. Slight shrubs, rooted in their crevices, were full of leaf. Their smallest twigs were tossed in the never-dying breeze, without being snapped. Yet we were glad when our friends were safe on the bridge again.

We descended the Biddle staircase,-the spiral staircase fixed against the perpendicular rock in Goat Island, and pursued a narrow path from its foot back to the Fall, where we found a glacier! An enormous pile of snow and ice lay against the rock, so solid, under this intense June sun, that Charley climbed to the top of it. Here every successive pulse of the cataract was like a cannon shot a few yards off; so that there was no standing it long; there was much yet to do; and the party probably observed, though no one chose to mention it, that the sun was going down. tached American Fall, by its rustic bridge, and hunted it back to its retreat in the wood. Our faces were now turned homewards; but we lingered long in the shades, and afterwards at Bath Island, where some one observed that it would be dusk before we could reach the ferry, and that the walk home on the Canada side was not of a kind to be prosecuted in the dark. The sun disappeared be

We crossed the de

fore we reached the ferry-house, and the panorama from the river was seen in the magnitude and majesty of twilight. In the dark woods on the Canada side, we made ourselves visible to each other by catching fire-flies and sticking them in our bonnets. They sat very still among our bows of ribbon, and really served our purpose very well.

Bad news awaited us at home,-news of Mr. Van Buren's casting vote in favour of the third reading of the Gag Bill; and of a fresh breaking out of the dreadful Creek war in Georgia: but now that that atrocious bill has long been thrown out, and the Creek war ended, (though with grievous suffering and humiliation to the poor Creeks,) this day of delicious dawdling (a word which Dr. F. by this time completely understood,) stands out bright enough to be worthy of the scene and of our human life.

PRIESTLEY.

"Ingrata Patria !"

Dante's Epitaph.

"Que l'homme donc s'estime son prix:—il a en lui la capacité de connôitre la vérité, et d'être heureux: mais il n'a point de vérité, ou constante, ou satisfaisante. Je voudrois donc porter l'homme à désirer d'en trouver; à être prêt et dégagé des passions pour la suivre où il la trouvera."-Pascal.

AMONG the select classes of men to whom the common race looks up with the heart-throb of mingled reverence and sympathy, none is perhaps so eminent as that of sufferers for opinion. If ever we are conscious of a breathing of the God-head in man, it is in the sanctified presence, actual or ideal, of martyrs to truth. Such men, as a class, are liable to particular faults, are usually marked by the imperfections which attend their virtues, as shadows are a consequence of sunshine. But in no case are men in general so tolerant of faults as in theirs ;-I do not mean in their own day, when they are not commonly recognised as confessors and martyrs, but when they stand out from the records of time, complete characters in history. The turbulence, jealousy, and self-will of such men are