e the sole occupants of the
omnibus, and they were embarrassed to be received at their hotel with
a burst of minstrelsy from a whole band of music. Isabel felt that a
single stringed instrument of some timid note would have been enough;
and Basil was going to express his own modest preference for a
jew's-harp, when the music ceased with a sudden clash of the cymbals.
But the next moment it burst out with fresh sweetness, and in alighting
they perceived that another omnibus had turned the corner and was
drawing up to the pillared portico of the hotel. A small family
dismounted, and the feet of the last had hardly touched the pavement
when the music again ended as abruptly as those flourishes of trumpets
that usher player-kings upon the stage. Isabel could not help laughing
at this melodious parsimony. "I hope they don't let on the cataract and
shut it off in this frugal style; do they, Basil?" she asked, and passed
jesting through a pomp of unoccupied porters and tallboys. Apparently
there were not many people stopping at this hotel, or else they were
all out looking at the Falls or confined to their rooms. However, our
travellers took in the almost weird emptiness of the place with their
usual gratitude to fortune for all queerness in life, and followed to
the pleasant quarters assigned them. There was time before supper for a
glance at the cataract, and after a brief toilet they sallied out again
upon the holiday street, with its parade of gay little shops, and thence
passed into the grove beside the Falls, enjoying at every instant their
feeling of arrival at a sublime destination.

In this sense Niagara deserves almost to rank with Rome, the metropolis
of history and religion; with Venice, the chief city of sentiment and
fantasy. In either you are at once made at home by a perception of its
greatness, in which there is no quality of aggression, as there always
seems to be in minor places as well as in minor men, and you gratefully
accept its sublimity as a fact in no way contrasting with your own
insignificance.

Our friends were beset of course by many carriage-drivers, whom they
repelled with the kindly firmness of experienced travel. Isabel even
felt a compassion for these poor fellows who had seen Niagara so much as
to have forgotten that the first time one must see it alone or only with
the next of friendship. She was voluble in her pity of Basil that it
was not as new to him as to her, till between the trees t