on their table; or,
perhaps, they give expression to their feelings, by way of inducing the
public to suppose that their fertile imaginations conceived something
far grander than this most glorious work of Nature. If a man propose to
go to Niagara for mere beauty, he had better stay at home and look at a
lily through a microscope; if to hear a mighty noise, he had better go
where the anchors are forged in Portsmouth dockyard; if to see a mighty
struggle of waters, he had better take a cruise, on board a pilot-boat,
in the Bay of Biscay, during an equinoctial gale; but, if he be content
to see the most glorious cataract his Maker has placed upon our globe;
if, in a stupendous work of Nature, he have a soul to recognise the
Almighty Workman; and if, while gazing thereon, he can travel from
Nature up to Nature's God; then, let him go to Niagara, in full
assurance of enjoying one of the grandest and most solemnizing scenes
that this earth affords. It wants but one qualification to be perfect
and complete; that, it had originally when fresh from the hands of its
Divine Maker; and of that man has rifled it--I mean solitude.--Palace
hotels are very convenient things; energy and enterprise are very
valuable qualities, and natural features of American character which I
admire; but, seeing how universally everything is sacrificed to the
useful and dollar-making, I dread to contemplate the future: for visions
rise before me of the woodman's axe levelling the forest timber on Goat
Island, which at present shrouds the town; and fancy pictures a line of
villas, shops, and mills, ending in a huge hotel, at the edge of the
cataract. I trust my vision may never be realized. But my hopes are
small; for I invariably observed that, in clearing ground, scarce any
attention had been paid to aught else but the best method of getting the
best return for the labour bestowed.

Now, reader, I have not told you as yet what my impressions were, as I
stood on the balcony gazing at Niagara; and, I pray you take not
offence, when I add that I have not the slightest intention of trying to
record them. Writing frankly, as I feel, I have said enough for you to
glean something of the turn they took, and to see that they were
impressions which a pen is too feeble an agent adequately to express. I
shall not tax your patience with Table Rock and Goat Island points of
view, American and Canadian falls, the respective beauties of the
Straight Line and the Hors