situated in a
wild and lonely place, with possibly one romantic hotel encircled by
balconies for the convenience of tourists who had travelled from great
distances to see it; whereas it is approached by a straight, flat, and
crowded road, with tram-cars pursuing their steady course the whole way
from Buffalo City. The Niagara Falls, so far from being in a lonely
spot, are surrounded by gasometers, steel factories, and chimney pots.
Of their beauty and magnificence it would be as ridiculous as it would
be presumptuous for me to write, but when my maid said she had expected
them to be more "outlandish," I did not contradict her.

Mr. Horton's brother told me of an Irishman who, on being asked to
express his opinion, answered, "I don't see what is to prevent the water
from going over," but I felt almost too depressed to laugh.

You might have supposed that the whole neighbouring population would
have risen like an army to protest against a hideous city of smoke and
steel being erected round the glorious Falls of Niagara, and it was
characteristic of the population of Buffalo that our chauffeur did not
pull up at the Falls, but, upon our stopping him, said he had presumed
we wanted to go to the power station.

If I ever return to America, I should not be surprised if a line of
safe-sailing steamships had been engineered to go down the Niagara
Falls.

I do not think that in Scotland either the country of Scott or the
Ettrick shepherd, nor the passes of Killiecrankie or Glencoe, will ever
be deformed for commercial purposes.

As a complete outsider with a short and hurried experience of the United
States, this has struck me more than anything else. Beauty, which is so
obvious in the architecture and other things, seems to be
underestimated, and where nature should dominate, I have been shocked on
every road that I have travelled by the huge billboards and
advertisements of the most flamboyant kind, which irritate the eye and
distort the vision of what otherwise would be unforgettable and
inspiring. It is much the same everywhere. In Chicago the Michigan
Boulevard, with the lovely lake on one side and grand buildings on the
other, running at enormous width for a long distance, is one of the
finest broadways in the world; but it is spoilt by a vulgar erection at
the end, advertising something or other against the sky, in electric
bulbs of rapid and changing colours.

I found the people I met were chiefly interested in th