that language fails;
but if the falls cannot be described, the ideas which are conjured up in
the mind, when we contemplate this wonderful combination of grandeur and
beauty, are often worth recording. The lines of Mrs Sigourney, the
American poetess, please me most.

Flow on for ever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty; God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantles around thy feet. And he doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him
Eternally--bidding the lip of man
Keep silence, and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe-struck praise.

When the Indian first looked upon the falls, he declared them to be the
dwelling of the Great Spirit. The savage could not imagine that the
Great Spirit dwelt also in the leaf which he bruised in his hand; but
here it appealed to his senses in thunder and awful majesty, and he was
compelled to acknowledge it.

The effects which the contemplation of these glorious waters produce,
are of course very different, according to one's temperament and
disposition. As I stood on the brink above the falls, continuing for a
considerable time to watch the great mass of water tumbling, dancing,
capering, and rushing wildly along, as if in a hurry to take the leap
and, delighted at it, I could not help wishing that I too had been made
of such stuff as would have enabled me to have joined it; with it to
have rushed innocuously down the precipice; to have rolled uninjured
into the deep unfathomable gulf below, or to have gambolled in the
atmosphere of spray, which rose again in a dense cloud from its
recesses. For about half an hour more I continued to watch the rolling
waters, and then I felt a slight dizziness and a creeping sensation come
over me--that sensation arising from strong excitement, and the same,
probably, that occasions the bird to fall into the jaws of the snake.
This is a feeling which, if too long indulged in, becomes irresistible,
and occasions a craving desire to leap into the flood of rushing waters.
It increased upon me every minute; and retreating from the brink, I
turned my eyes to the surrounding foliage, until the effect of the
excitement had passed away. I looked upon the waters a second time, and
then my thoughts were directed into a very different channel. I wished
myself a magician, that I might transport the falls to Italy, and pour
their whole volume of waters into the crater of Mount Vesuvius; witness
th