ls of our domestic castles are
outraged with _graffiti_ of this class; highways and byways display
them; and if the good Duke with the melancholy Jaques were to wander in
some forest of New Arden, in the United States, they would be sure to

"Find _elixirs_ on trees, _bitters_ in the running brooks,
_Syrups_ on stones, and _lies_ in everything."

Last year, weary of shop, and feeling the necessity of restoring tone to
the mind by a course of the sublime, Thompson and I paid many dollars,
travelled many miles, ran many risks, and suffered much from
impertinence and from dust, in order that we might see the wonders of
the Lord, his mountains and his waterfalls. We stood at the foot of the
mountain, and, gazing upward at a precipice, the sublime we were in
search of began to swell within our hearts, when our eyes were struck by
huge Roman letters painted on the face of the rock, and held fast, as if
by a spell, until we had read them all. They asked the question, "Are
you troubled with worms?"

It is hardly necessary to say that the sublime within us was instantly
killed. It would be fortunate, indeed, for the afflicted, if the
specific of this charlatan St. George were half as destructive to the
intestinal dragons he promises to destroy. Then we turned away to the
glen down which the torrent plunged. And there, at the foot of the fall,
in the midst of the boiling water, the foam, and spray, rose a tall crag
crowned with silver birch, and hung with moss and creeping vines,
bearing on its gray, weather-beaten face: "Rotterdam Schnapps." Bah! it
made us sick. The caldron looked like a punch-bowl, and the breath of
the zephyrs smelt of gin and water.

Thousands of us see this dirty desecration of the shrines to which we
make our summer pilgrimage, and bear with the sacrilege meekly, perhaps
laugh at the wicked generation of pill-venders, that seeks for places to
put up its sign. But does not this tolerance indicate the note of
vulgarity in us, as Father Newman might say? Is it not a blot on the
people as well as on the rocks? Let them fill the columns of newspapers
with their ill-smelling advertisements, and sham testimonials from the
Reverend Smith, Brown, and Jones; but let us prevent them from setting
their traps for our infirmities in the spots God has chosen for his
noblest works. What a triple brass must such men have about their
consciences to dare to flaunt their falsehoods in such places! It is a
blasphem