you tired of
your solitary contemplation, after all."

"I found this fair lady roaming among the rocks, and ventured to escort
her to the party," said the gentleman, bowing politely, as he delivered
Florence to the care of her father.

"Thank you, thank you, sir," returned Major Howard, casting a
scrutinizing glance toward the young man as he turned away.

"My daughter, what do you think of this scene?" he asked, turning to
her.

The glowing happiness, which lighted her features with almost
supernatural beauty, astonished him.

"That I have never seen aught so awfully grand and majestic before,"
returned she, in a tone of wild enthusiasm.

"Does it surpass Niagara?"

"Infinitely," answered she. "Niagara is grand, but it is a single,
solitary grandeur. Here, our vision encompasses a boundless expanse of
dread, terrific sublimities; a sea of towering Alpine summits on every
hand, with fearfully-yawning gulfs and chasms; tremendous precipices,
over whose dizzy edges, as we look down, and down, and down into the
abysmal depths of bright green valleys, starred over with tiny white
cottages, and graced with winding rivers and waving fields of grain, we
mark the dark straight lines of unnumbered railways, with their flying
trains of cars; countless sheets of water flashing like molten silver;
the spires and domes of numerous hamlets, villages, and cities; and, far
in the distance, the broad Atlantic's dark blue surface, jotted over
with white gleaming sails. O, father, father!" she exclaimed, almost
wild with her emotions of awe and admiration, "is there in all the world
a spectacle to equal that which feasts our vision now?"

"It is a grand scene," said the father, participating in his daughter's
vivid enjoyment. "Look far on those blue summits that bound the prospect
to the west and north. Those singularly-formed peaks you notice are
called Camel's Rump and Mansfield mountains."

"Would I might forever dwell here!" exclaimed Florence, her eyes roaming
in every direction, as though her soul could never drink its fill of the
sublimity around.

Perhaps other delights than the scenery would afford rose in bright
anticipation, and caused her to utter this strange, wild wish.

"You forget the awful winters, Florence, when you would perish beneath
the sky-piled snows," said her father.

"O, I would not mind them!" she answered. "I'd have a little habitation,
hidden down among the rocks, where I could sit by a cosey