imperturbable, almost sullen in its marble green, than it does just
below the great fall; but the slight circles that mark the hidden
vortex seem to whisper mysteries the thundering voice above could not
proclaim,--a meaning as untold as ever.

It is fearful, too, to know, as you look, that whatever has been
swallowed by the cataract is like to rise suddenly to light here,
whether uprooted tree, or body of man or bird.

The rapids enchanted me far beyond what I expected; they are so swift
that they cease to seem so; you can think only of their beauty. The
fountain beyond the Moss Islands I discovered for myself, and thought
it for some time an accidental beauty which it would not do to
leave, lest I might never see it again. After I found it permanent,
I returned many times to watch the play of its crest. In the little
waterfall beyond, Nature seems, as she often does, to have made a
study for some larger design. She delights in this,--a sketch within
a sketch, a dream within a dream. Wherever we see it, the lines of
the great buttress in the fragment of stone, the hues of the
waterfall copied in the flowers that star its bordering mosses, we
are delighted; for all the lineaments become fluent, and we mould the
scene in congenial thought with its genius.

People complain of the buildings at Niagara, and fear to see it
further deformed. I cannot sympathize with such an apprehension: the
spectacle is capable of swallowing up all such objects; they are not
seen in the great whole, more than an earthworm in a wide field.

The beautiful wood on Goat Island is full of flowers; many of the
fairest love to do homage here. The Wake-robin and May-apple are in