There is, if we do not dream, something more than poetry in the prophecy of the hills and rivers. There is an educational power in the substantial forms of a country, far surpassing that of the finest sculpture. It is only the Peter Bells that see hills and woods and rivers in our earthly patrimony, and ro more. Of only such a one can we say

"A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more."

We are free to confess that the scenery of a country is nothing less in our estimation than the furniture of man's temple home. Instead of being the circumstances, or conditions, or even the complements of the national character, it forms at once its elements and model. No people has ever been so creative and independent as to rise above its suggestions and studies. Scenery has an intellectual import and mission. It is a grand and harmonious assemblage of substantial symbols, through which the Almighty instructs men, and the imagery of which forms all that is grand, beautiful,

vates him with emotion, enchants him with form; she never intended man should walk among her flowers, and her fields, and her streams, unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of the hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities." This is a truthful utterance of a great man-one that is to have a meaning beyond the graphic indications of the words by which it is known, in the experience of the American people.

The influences and instructions of nature, the lessons of her scenery, as thus viewed, are far superior to art. Her schools are more charming and effective than those of the state. Her galleries of the picturesque far transcend, in all the elements and combinations of beauty and power, those of the nations. Like the approach of spring, so happily sung by Schiller, she forbids all familiarity, preserving a sacredness and dignity

and permanent, in the languages, traditions, and literature of the world. The mountains have been the nurseries of religious myths and liberty: the sources of rivers have fostered the gratitude of natural piety in all ages.

The free influences of nature have not waited for the tardy awakenings and recognition of the soul. They antedated consciousness and all human education. They came to the cradle, they floated about our homes, and bathed the awaking heart in mystery and sweetness; and when we were able to walk alone against the winds, and drink in the wonder and the joy that live in the face of inanimate things, they aided us in giving birth to the beauty and grandeur of human conception. They became part of our being. Nature, we feel, has a varied language, which is admirably indicated by Sydney Smith.

"I, for one," says he, "strongly believe in the affirmative of the question, that nature speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language; that she astonishes him with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendour, soothes him with harmony, capti

while she teaches, caresses, and bestows gifts upon all classes of men-the sullen and gloomy Indian as well as the delighted white man. The secret of all this is strangely overlooked. We speak of mind as being the most powerful agent to influence mind, and wonder how it is that we feel on a spur of the Cattskill such lofty emotions. We forget or strangely overlook the fact, that the Infinite is influencing us in natural scenery, and, in the presence of mountains and lakes and rivers, lending, through the sense of the Infinite, something of His own grandeur to the soul.

Instances that illustrate and confirm what we have said cannot be wanting to any well-informed mind. The character and literature of the Goths, their history and religion, are imbued with the spirit of northern regions-storms, mists, and the dread ocean mingle in all. The Greeks found the elements of their civilisation in their native valleys and on their native hills. The climate that hung upon Olympus and Pelion, and shaded the groves of Academus, yielded to their minds the clear medium through which they pictured oreades on the distant hills and created gods out of remembered

heroes. Their philosophy and poetry alike partook of the sharpness and distinctness of their scenery, its variety and lovely magnificence. As seen from the Parthenon, it is the physical counterpart of all that Greece has been. "There is no mixture of light and shade, no half-concealing, half-revealing, as in the symbolical cathedrals of the christian faith. There are no rays of divine darkness, running along the side of the rays of light, and sinking into the ground beneath, the altar of the East. All is open to the unbounded blue ether above, and the vertical rays of a noon-day sun, and the trembling visitations of the unimpeded moon-beams a very house of light, unstained by painted glass, undarkened by vaulted roofs, unintercepted by columns and arcades, and with the instantaneous perception, unmarred by the cruciform shape." Here is the source of the Hellenic religion and song as known to us. If any additional evidence were wanted to illustrate or confirm the influence of national scenery upon national character, it is furnished in the language, traditions, and character of the Indians, in which our aged forests have left their impressions as manifestly as in the colour and temper of the red-man. Evidences may be gathered up in our daily walks. The Atlantic slope, the snowy cotton-fields of the South, and the grand West, have given their distinctive features to our people; each division has its own type of character.

A few instances of the influence of scenery in the formation of individual character will bring the subject more immediately within the reach of all. Artists, poets, and philosophers, have freely acknowledged it; and, indeed, if they should be so ungrateful to the Creator as to deny it, all that we should have to do, to brand them as the ungrateful guests of the Almighty, would be to reclaim the imagery and the thoughts they borrowed from the earth. "There is," says Beerus, "scarcely any earthly object gives me more I do not know how I should call it pleasure-but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me-than to walk in the sheltered side of the wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and roaring over the plain. It is my best season for devotion." Solger, long accustomed to inland scenes, gives us a fine illustration of the influence of scenery on the mind, in speaking of his first sight of the sea. "Here," says he, "for the first time, I felt the impression of the illimitable, as produced by an object of sense, in its full majesty." The works and characters of Humboldt and Audubon are rich in such illustrations. Goethe, whose whole character and writings wear an inland impress, and seldom, if ever, afford an instance of a well-defined sense of the infinite, was conscious of the formative power of scenery and its distinctive influence. "Perhaps," says he, " it is the sight of the sea from youth upwards, that gives English and Spanish poets an ascendancy over those of inland countries.".

Musing on the influence of physical scenery in the forma tion of national and individual character, we find ourselves looking out over the New World. The savage and classic scenery of America, and especially that of the United States, awaken mingled emotions in our minds. We have a goodly heritage; but few, if we except artists and poets and moralists, are prepared to acknowledge it in its scenic aspect, and lend themselves to its cultivation. The division of labour, the multiplication of inventive skill, and the isolation of men in the absorbing pursuit of one idea or one aim, abandon it to neglect, or, worse still, subject it to the despotism of their utility. Business is engrossing, and daily commits wholesale robberies on the hearts and homes of men. Railroads are marring the picturesque, and mills are drying up our cascades and cataracts. The falls of Paterson are nearly effaced. Even Niagara has been threatened in our daring progress. The terror of his power alone guards his majestic reign.

But what is American scenery? The fact that it is destined to play an important part in the history of our people, and, by the constitution of things, must lend its forms and meaning to their thoughts, invests it with an enduring interest. The historian who forgets this, and stops at the landing of the

Pilgrims, the Saybrook Platform, or even the landing of Columbus, as our first historic antecedents, stops short of one of the grandest in our history and character, the physical scenery of America. The character of New England is greatly indebted to New England soil. This is pre-eminently true of the West. Its recognition by statesmen and educators would be a new compromise, and form one of the finest conservative elements in the unity of the country; its improvement by government would be a national benefaction, far surpassing the favours conferred on certain localities by special grants. We need some measures by which the savage and classic scenes of our country shall appear in a national gallery, and be preserved as the true archives of the nation-divine archives.

We return to the question-What is American scenery! It is around us in distinctive features, of which we are conscious. We look out upon it in all its variety and vicissitudes. Its diurnal and seasonal dress wins attention. The howl of winds in the clear winter-sky, the magic verdure of spring, the glowing heats of unclouded summer weather, and the play of dissolving autumn tints in its dreamy haze, as they suceced each other and crown the varied year, give to the broad and bold land-and-water features of our country an unusual richness in picturesque effect.

In such a contemplation, we feel that there is little in the name American. It has not for us, as Anglo-Saxons, even a historic antecedent. The name is little; the significance of the thing is all. We seek the meaning of our national inheritance. American scenery is a bold and varied language ot substantial forms; and in order to understand it and translate it into the speech of man, it is necessary to examine its structure, distinctive objects, and their disposition in the local landscape and national territory.

American scenery is not the complement of Asia and Europe, but the excellence of both. Its composition is a simple but grand arrangement of the distinctive features of the Old World. The scenery of Asia, like the vast outline of that almost unbroken mass of the earth, presents a massive but little varied unity. Europe, on the other hand, exhibits an endless variety. Europe, by this characteristic, as seen in its contour and relief, performed a noble part in the diverse development of the human race. American scenery repeats the distinctive features of both, and in happy accordance. The structure of the continent is eminently simple, but imposing; its contours and reliefs are favourable to the most extended enterprise, and the disposition of its parts such as secures the union of beauty and utility in an unusual degree. Fertility allies itself to natural loveliness: the farmer plants and reaps in companionship of a friendly grandeur.

The distinctive features of American scenery, as a whole, are, in our opinion, the unity of its variety, and the variety of its unity. None of those elements, so necessary to the idea of excellence, is permitted to reach an extreme. This feature, so peculiarly North American, forces upon us the somewhat ambitious thought, that our country is admirably adapted to become the home of a people whose civilisation is to be distinguished by its care of the individual, and the restoration of liberty and union to the human family. Here it is necessary to take into consideration the vastness of the scale on which this feature is exhibited-a scale extending from the Atlantic slope to the sea-board of the Pacific; and in all its range-whether we consider the northern chain of lakes, the mountain ranges, the wonderful scenery of the Potomac, the head-waters of the Mississippi, the peninsula of California, the far-reaching region extending between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, or the wonders that line the banks of the far-off Columbia and the Willammate, wandering for hundreds of miles through an unsubdued but fertile wildernessit presents a singular unity and variety of all that is necessary to constitute the territory of the greatest of nations.

But it is not the contemplation of the whole that benefits the soul by awakening a well-defined admiration, so much as the nearer study of its distinctive parts. The lakes, rivers, mountains, forests, and prairies of North America are the theme of an ever-renewing wonder.

The American lakes are generally regarded as one of the stinctive features of our country. Their magnitude is such excites the astonishment of Europeans. They lie along our orthern frontier like a chain of inland seas. They spread at their waters on the bosom of our middle states, deep and road enough for contending armaments. Their magnitude, Dwever imposing, is by no means their most effective feature. heir haunts are more impressive to our mind the mountain ad forest scenery in which they echo to the voice of stormy inds, or, burnished by the unmitigated summer-noon, gleam ke silver plains through the umbrageous forests that encircle lem. Schroon lake, dear to the fine arts, lies embosomed in ild and picturesque haunts. The bases of the Adirondacks re beautified by lakes, quiet and lovely in their leafy solitude. ake George is a household word of picturesque beauty. Its old and jutting shores, rampart hills, pure waters, garniture

extended her right arm to welcome into her bosom." Buneau, a tributary of Bear river, runs through a fearful chasm for the distance of some hundred and fifty miles-a chasm more than 2,000 feet deep, and only a part of a country that is little less than an indescribable chaos. The scenery of the main river, in the language of Irving, is truly grand. "At times," says he, "the river was overhung by dark and stupendous rocks, rising like gigantic walls and battlements; these were rent by wide and yawning chasms that seemed to speak of past convulsions of nature. Sometimes the river flowed glossy and smooth, then roaring amid impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here rocks were piled up in most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another place they were succeeded by delightful valleys." We add only another instance of river scenery. We only indicate it, and in the language of Jefferson. "The passage of the Potomac through the Blue

of islands rising like emeralds on its breast, and its bold relief in an atmosphere singularly subject to change and the agitations of violent storms, furnish us with a true picture of loveliness and its antithesis.

American rivers exist in harmony with her lakes. Some of them are vast; others are beautiful; all, with few exceptions, picturesque. They flow for the most part through the fulness of forest scenes, and, in many cases, enliven the almost oppressive terror of mountain gorges by the dash of their waters. Their banks are crowned, in some places, with bluffs, rising occasionally to the magnitude of mountains; in other places they are lined by the waving grass of the far-reaching prairie; and in most places ennobled by wild dispositions of rocks, or the solemn forest. The head-waters of the Mississippi are rich in studies for the artist. The Hudson has already been made glorious in tradition and song and on the canvas. Cooper has spoken of one river as "the mighty Susquehannah, a river to which the Atlantic herself has

Ridge is, perhaps, one of the most stupendous scenes in

nature."

The river scenery, which we have indicated, although noble and richly diversified, yields, in many points, to the scenery of the creeks. In saying this, it is necessary to add, not for our own benefit, but that of foreigners, that our creeks are not European creeks, but rivers in almost any other country than America.

The scenery through which they flow, and of which they form the life-like current, are exceedingly varied and pleasing. Now we stop to gaze upon rocky bluffs rising up in front of receding woods, and then ascend an eminence to behold the stream winding through rich valleys and approaching hills. This hour, we are admiring the outline of islands and the pleasing contour of the banks; and the next, looking up the rocks and wood-girt avenue of water to the cascades that sparkle and foam in the distance. As an instance of rich and beautiful creek scenery, we may mention Esopus creek. The accompanying engraving is a view on that creek, and was taken from a study by E. W. Durand, a young artist of great promise, as one who is to give a truthful and vigorous rendering of the lessons of nature.

The mountains of America are, in many respects, the most varied and striking objects in its scenery. They are not, as a whole, so grand in their outline and effect as the mountains of Southern Europe, but they are richer in studies and the details of the picturesque. Their sides are thick in choice recesses, where the artist may find rocks and trees and cascades in imposing dispositions.

The chasms are often terrible, the defiles vast, and the wooded sides always impressive, especially under the influence of an autumn atmosphere. The Cattskill raises its blue height some three thousand feet, full of wild and wonderful scenes. The White Mountains furnish many noble rocky views. The Alleghanies are never monotonous. The Rocky Mountains abound in all the elements of savage scenery. The Adirondacks, with their cone-like peaks, jagged ridges, wooded sides, echoing along which is heard the sound of numerous cascades; and the lakes that repose in wooded solitudes at their bases, form a noble feature in our northern mountain scenery. The Adirondack Pass-a gorge between two mountains, filled with huge rocks surmounted with green trees, and the precipice rising on one of its sides to the height of a thousand feet is a wild and dreadful scene.

Rocks form a feature in the scenery of America, which the lover of nature and the artist cannot very well overlook. They appear solitary or associated, wild or beautiful in the mantling mass of centuries. We do not speak now so much of the solid pyramidal pile, or the crags that range the upper summits of the mountains, as those that guard the gorges and passes of

mountain chains, or lie deep within the woods that clothe their sides. There are almost endless recesses in American mountains, and in these, unseen and untold studies for the artist. The gnarled and knotted roots of the maple, big with age, spread out their folds among huge fragments of the rent peaks, now clothed with lichens or moss in their fall, or washed by the playful cascade fringed with inimitable green. Among our fallen rocks, thus beautified and rendered picturesque, there are innumerable haunts and walks of wisdom. There is another class of rocks which the genius of our people, and especially the Puritan descendants in New England, have ennobled by associations.

The prairies are, perhaps, the most distinctive feature of our scenery. They are altogether unlike the steppes of Russia, dreary and cold; the gloomy brown heaths of Great Britain; and the slanos of South America, ever subject to the dreadful dominion of floods or torrid heat. The grassy, the timbered, and the undulating prairies of the West, are vast desert gardens, where the wild flowers flaunt in gaudiness, and unnumbered animals find a playground. Vast and fertile, they await the advancing steps of our people to subdue them.

"These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed
And motionless for ever. Motionless!

No, they are all unchained again."-Bryant.

THE road from Alessandria to Plaisance passes through some of the most delightful scenery it is possible to imagine. Trees, gardens, corn-fields, vineyards rich with purple grapes, green valleys covered with luxuriant foliage, snow-white cottages peeping out from the clustering trees, moss-grown paling, and silver streams, on the margin of which the reeds spring up and the water-fowl find homes. All these things together present at every turn the most charming prospect to the eye of the traveller; and whether seen at early dawn, at broad noon-day, or set of sun, are delightfully picturesque and full of romantic beauty.

It was the spring-time of the year. The fields, the gardens, the forests, and the vineyards were full of promise. Every leaf and bud and opening flower indicated the approach of summer, and there was a serenity and beauty over everything that made the humble village, with its quaint old cottages, its winding street, its simple church, and brotherhood of aged trees that girdled it about, a most delightful place. It was a pleasant thing to stand beneath the trellised avenue that led to the door of Francesco's dwelling, as it commanded a view of the whole village, being built on the rising ground of the hill. It was a beautiful prospect. There the road that led to the mountains; there the wide-stretching fields; here the stream that, flowing down the hills, looked like a silver ribbon from afar, but deepened and widened as it came along, babbling as it came. Standing beneath the porch, looking about him as the day declined, was Francesco himself, a handsome, well-made fellow; the rays of the setting sun were gilding the coming night with their departing glory. As Francesco regarded the prospect before him, it seemed to him as if the mountain stream was wider than of yore-as if it tossed and tumbled as it came with more than wonted vigouras if the murmur of the water increased in loudness; but he thought nothing of it. Amid the varied-tinted clouds, that like some fairy-land stretched out in red and gold and purple, the sun sank down and twilight deepened into night.

That night a storm came on. Rain fell in torrents; the thunder awakened the simple villagers with its awful music; and by the broad glare of the lightning they saw the mountain stream no longer like a silver ribbon, but a sheet of water, pouring down upon them, sweeping over fields, vineyards, and gardens, and threatening in its impetuous course to destroy everything before it. This might have been expected. Heavy rains had fallen during the winter, the snows had blocked up the mountain passes, and danger had been apprehended. That apprehension was now realised. The greatest alarm prevailed; people fled in every direction. The waters were rapidly rising. Francesco, with his mother, his wife, and children, attempted to escape. Their peril was great. The mother of Francesco was old and infirm, utterly unable to help herself; he had to bear her in his arms as he fled. His wife led her eldest son by the hand, and bore her infant in its cradle on her head. In such a terrible scene as that which presented itself to them they sought help in vain. Every tie of friendship seemed to be broken; every one sought their own safety, and waited not to render help to others; and the tempest still raged, and higher and higher the water rose, plunging and roaring and casting its showers of spray over every obstacle it encountered, bearing away on its ruffled surface many a household treasure. Francesco and his family pushed bravely on towards the little bridge which stemmed the stream. Judge of their despair, when they found it a mere wreck-when, as well as the light would let them, they noticed its old timbers tossed to and fro on the troubled water, and only a remnant of the structare still remaining. Torches flitting here and there added to the wildness of the prospect; the darkness which covered everything was at intervals broken by the broad glare of the lightning, the deafening roar of the waters, and the pealing thunder, making stout hearts quake.

"Help! help!"

The rising waters threaten the speedy destruction of the