III. CATSKILL FALLS. JULY. I DID not see the sun rise from the Catskill. Therefore my more cunning way would be to give you a florid history of all the sunrises that I have seen from famous places, omitting mention of the chills, yawns, and, in general, very ameliorated admiration of such early spectacles. Quite unwittingly I was conscious of no sunrise that bright Sunday morning upon the Catskill; yet I was not scornful of it, but only sleepy. Not scornful, for still flashes along the heights of memory many a Swiss sunrise. That of the Righi, for instance, with the groups of well-whiskered Englishmen and well-booted Americans, gathered upon the Culm and wraped in coats, cloaks, blankets, and comfortersas if each had arisen, bed and all, and had so stepped out to enjoy the spectacle. A wooden horn was blown, much vague sentiment was uttered, and the exceeding absurdity of the crowd interfered with the grandeur of the moment. But beyond these, and above them, were the peaks of the Mid-Alps, celestial snow-fields, smooth and glittering as the sky, and the rugged glaciers sloping into unknown abysses, Niagaran cataracts frozen in foam for ever. There were lesser mountains in the undulating mass of the panorama, green and graceful, or angular with sharp cliffs, sheering perpendicularly away, or gently veering into the glassy calmness of cold lakes, in which the night had bathed, and left its blackness. There was the range of the Jura, dusky and far, and the faint flash of the Aar in the morning mist, and among these awful mountains, and upon them, spots of fame, poetic and patriotic, each one the home of a thousand traditions, each the melody of myriad houseIt was the region of William Tell all hold songs. around me. The keen, cool breath of early morning smote me, as with the heroic spirit of the story, and the sentiments and memories of the spot brightened into significance with the increasing dawn. And as we stood there, too shivering to be sentimental-for the breath which lives "with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns," blew every feeling away that was not genuine and fair-far over the hushed tumult of peaks which thronged to the utmost east, came the sun, sowing those sublime snow-fields with glorious day. The light leaped from peak to peak, the only thing alive, glad and gay, worthy to sport with those worthy mates, until the majestic solemnity of the moment yielded to the persuasive warmth of day, and our hearts yearned for the valley. Do you remember in Tennyson's "Princess," the "small, sweet Idyl" which she read? "Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height; In height and cold, the splendour of the hills? To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, |