ny thing more picturesque than
the gorge of the Niagara river: it combines rapid water, a placid bay, a
tremendous wall of rock, forest, glade, village, column, active and
passive life.

Queenston is a poor place; it has never gained an inch since the war of
1812; but, as a railroad has been established, and a wharf is building
in connection with it, it will go ahead. Opposite to it is Lewiston, in
the United States, less ancient and time-worn, full of gaudily-painted
wooden houses, and with much more pretension. Queenston looks like an
old English hamlet in decay; melancholy and miserable; Lewiston is the
type of newness, all white and green, all unfinished and all
uncomfortable.

The odious bar-room system of the Northern States is fast sweeping away
all vestiges of English comfort. The practice of lounging, cigar in
mouth, sipping juleps and alcoholic decoctions in common with smugglers
and small folk, is fast unhinging society. The plan of social economy in
the mercantile cities is rapidly spreading over the whole Union, and the
fashion of ladies' drawing-rooms being absorbed into the parlour of an
hotel or boarding-house has brought about a change which the next
generation will lament.

It is the restless rage for politics, the ever present desire for
dollars, which has brought about this state of things; the young husband
seeks the bar-room as a merchant does the Change; and thus, except in
the wealthy class, or among the contemplative and retired, there is no
such thing as private life in the northern cities and towns. Huge
taverns, real wooden gin palaces, tower over the tops of all other
buildings, in every border village, town, and city; and a good bar is a
better business than any other. Thus in Lewiston, in Buffalo, in short,
in every American border town, the best building is the tavern, and the
next best the meeting-house; both are fashionable, and both are anything
but what they should be; for he who keeps the best liquors, and he who
preaches most pointedly to the prevailing taste, makes the most of his
trade. The voluntary system is a capital speculation to the publican as
well as to the parson; but, unfortunately, it is more general with the
former than with the latter.

The Niagara frontier is a rich and a fertile portion of Canada,
surrounded almost by water, and intersected by rivers, and the Welland
Canal, with an undulating surface in the interior. It grows wheat,
Indian corn, and all the cer