A lovelier landscape can scarce be imagined than that which presented
itself from the deck of the sloop. It was the first time I had ascended
the river, or indeed that any of the Clawbonny party had been up it so
high, Mr. Hardinge excepted; and everybody was called on deck to look at
the beauties of the hour. The sloop was about a mile above Hudson, and the
view was to be gazed at towards the south. This is perhaps the finest
reach of this very beautiful stream, though it is not the fashion to think
so; the Highlands being the part usually preferred. It is easy enough for
me, who have since lived among the sublimity of the Swiss and Italian
lakes, to understand that there is nothing of a very sublime character,
relatively considered, in any of the reaches of the Hudson; but it would
be difficult to find a river that has so much which is exquisitely
beautiful; and this, too, of a beauty which borders on the grand. Lucy was
the first person to create any doubts in my mind concerning the perfection
of the Highlands. Just as the cockney declaims about Richmond Hill--the
_inland_ view from Mont-Martre, of a clouded day, is worth twenty of
it--but just as the provincial London cockney declaims about Richmond
Hill, so has the provincial American been in the habit of singing the
praises of the Highlands of the Hudson. The last are sufficiently
striking, I will allow; but they are surpassed in their own kind by a
hundred known mountain landscapes; while the softer parts of the river
have scarcely a rival. Lucy, I repeat, was the first person to teach me
this distinction--Lucy, who then had never seen either Alps or Apennines.
But her eye was as true as her principles, her tongue, or her character.
All was truth about this dear girl--truth unadulterated and unalloyed.

"Certainly, my dear Mrs. Drewett," the dear girl said, as she stood
supporting the old lady, who leaned on her arm, gazing at the glorious
sunset, "the Highlands have nothing to equal this! To me this seems all