them which might have come from the city, (and, by the way, you will be surprised constantly at the West by the townish look of the people. The communication is so easy, that they get the fashions far sooner than places within forty miles of the metropolis.) Then there was here and there a cluster of curls that might not have shocked Manuel, and one or two well fitted bodices; but the shoes!

(Tom! never speak to a woman out of the city till you have seen her shoe! It is an infallible test. A lady who will wear a bad shoe has a bad taste, and that, in dress, implies a rude education.) I was about giving up in despair, after making the circuit two or three times, when a group which had escaped me from the crowd or simplicity of dress, caught my attention. The face of the only person turned to me was concealed by a veil, and I looked down with a natural instinct-there never was but one such foot in the world!— I would have sworn to it if I had seen it in Nova Zembla.

Our greeting would have shocked you. You have no idea how glad people are to see each other at a distance from home. It is a pleasure to see even one's tailor (if his bill is paid,) but to meet a woman like Miss! She presented me immediately to the ladies-some friends of hers I did not know, and after getting Job up to be introduced with considerable difficulty, you may imagine how swimmingly we got on.

The lake widens a few miles. from Geneva, and loses, of course, some of its beauty. A near shore is necessary to the picturesque. So, indeed, is a near view of everything in scenery. It was always a wonder to me how people could talk so extravagantly of the 'fine views' from mountains and over broad lakes. There is a kind of abstract sublime, it is true, in seeing so much and so far; but you can see nothing distinctly, and if it is water it is not half so beautiful as the sky, and if it is land, it looks like a near view of a brown uncultivated heath. I would rather stand on a hill side and look down into a green hollow that I could throw a stone over, than, (after having been on one,) to look, for the mere beauty of the scene, from all the high mountains in the universe. Whenever you are so distant as to lose the color of the vegetation, the outline of the trees, the lights and shadows of the slopes, and the comparative distance and size of objects, the effect is lost. I shall never forget my disappointment in looking from the Kaatskill. (I was more than compensated by the falls. It is worth while to go to the Cauterskills, if it were only to look down that terrific chasm, and get an idea of a world rent to its centre.) I remember, too, reading in some book of poetry, when I was a boy, of the 'grandeur of the sea;' and though I was bred upon the coast, and had always loved the water, and sailed my boat over the bay half the Saturday afternoons I could remember, I put by the book and went down to look at it as if for the first time

the thought of its' grandeur' was so new to me. I confess the idea of the ocean, immense as we know it to be, is grand-awful if you will-but what we see of it is nothing to the unbroken breadth of the sky, or the gathering of the great thunder clouds for a storm. I was always impressed by these with an awe which is among my earliest recollections; but I had spent days, miles out in the ocean, and never, till I was told, did I dream of its sublimity. Apart from its power, and as a mere object of sight, its imposing effect is certainly overrated. Had the poet spoken of the beautiful sea,' I should not have wondered; for there is a magnificence in its many changes that is surpassed by nothing but the sunset clouds of sumIt is a fine stroke of nature in the old ballad where the sailor boy pines in captivity for

mer.

"The wind's familiar music

And the sight of the pleasant sea.”

There are several narrow points running far out into the lake from the west side, which are covered with trees, and add very much to its beauty. We stopped near one of these to take in wood, and I went ashore in the boat with Job, to visit a picturesque cascade, which had worn down its bed till it seemed to pour from the very heart of the mountain. While we were standing and gazing at it, the bell rang for us, and, on hurrying to the shore, we found that the wood boat had gone off. There was a small wherry lying upon the sand, however, and I sent Job to a group of people standing a little way from the beach, to get a man to row us off. I saw by their gestures that they refused, and was about going to his assistance, when, to my utter astonishment, he seized a stout boy in his arms, and plying his long legs with a most amusing celerity, had flung him into the skiff and shoved off, before the natives had recovered from their astonishment. They followed us with stones, but what with my boyish accomplishment of sculling, and Job's industry at the bailing porringer, we reached the boat, and were received with cheers by the amused passengers. A competent quid pro quo satisfied our impressed ferryman, and he paddled back, apparently quite

reconciled to his adventure.

We were soon out of the little bay, and went rapidly up the lake, keeping close in to the shore, and catching many glimpses, as we glided by, of those spots of chance beauty that so frequently, in an uncultivated wild, surpass the most elaborate cultivation. I was just pointing out to our agreeable friends a green hollow of singular beauty in the very bosom of a wooded crescent, when there was a cry forward of a man overboard.' The next moment something dark rushed under the wheel, and Job, with a single bound and the quickness of a thought, sprang into the wake in the very spot where it

must have sunk. There was a rush immediately to the stern, and, for a moment, suspense seemed to have paralyzed every arm on board. I stood myself for a half minute, looking at the gurgling eddy which closed over him, in perfect horror. My first thought was to jump in after him, but recollecting that he was a first rate swimmer, I seized a bench, and shouting an order for the boat, threw it over. Just as it touched the water, he rose some way astern, with his long black hair plastered over his eyes, his face composed with his usual decent gravity, and in his arms-a large pine log! He was too bewildered to discover his mistake immediately, and swam stoutly for a minute with his prize half out of water; but the shout of laughter from the passengers, or his own senses, soon undeceived him, and he quietly loosened his hold, and, laying his face down to the water like a shamed boy, made his way vigorously towards the boat. He was soon on board, and, after equipping himself in a pair of my integuments, and the old calico gown with the red sprig which you remember in college, he made his appearance on deck, and, notwithstanding the ludicrous result of his attempt, was, for the rest of the day, quite a hero. But what a waste of chivalry! I could almost have wished our dainty spirituelle had played Europa to his bull (not a pun Tom, on my honor)—he would have been so worthy of the reward. God bless the beautiful creature! she gave him her little hand so warmly after he was dry, that I fear he blessed the accident, awkward as it was. I had a great mind to push off a log and do the desperate thing myself.

We neared the head of the lake about noon. The shore on the east side here is an almost perpendicular cliff of ninety or a hundred feet elevation, with deep water at its very base. From this height, a splendid cascade, called Hector Falls, pours into the lake. We were just getting a fine view of it, when there was a cry that the shaft of one of the wheels was broken, and the boat came to. The nearest village was four or five miles distant, and as a blacksmith must be found, and the delay would probably be.one of some hours, we took a boat and went ashore at the fall. You must get Job's journal for a description of this, too. I could not do its singular beauty justice. It is formed by a very considerable creek, which comes winding from the east to the shore of the lake, and pours its waters in over the steep and broken declivity just mentioned, in one long sheet of foam, and with a picturesque violence that is in striking contrast with the quiet summer scenery about it. We reached the brow of the rock, with a little additional color in the brunette cheek of our friend, and (feel for me, Tom-400 miles from Wall street!) the total sacrifice of my newest Bentons!

It was a splendid sight from the summit. spray flashing from our pedestal to the lake,

One sheet of bright and the green woods

stretching up from the unstirred edge of the water, on the opposite shore, clear away to the horizon, in one unbroken forest. You have no idea of the extent of a western wilderness. John Neal (who gives better ideas of magnitude than any other man living,) expresses it well when he talks of 'forests in which all the nations of Europe might lose themselves.'

We idled about for an hour or two between shade and sunshine, found one or two rare minerals, and an eagle's feather, which our mischievous friend insisted on putting into Job's hat to his mingled distress and gratification, and were on board again two hours before sunset with appetites which shockingly belied our cockney education. They gave us for supper fried potatoes and something in an abominable gravy which I did not recognize, (if you tell of it, Tom, do not mention my name,) and we all ate some-on my honor! Job says he knows what it was. Credat Judæus !

The night was clear, and the lake was perfectly dead with stillness. The broad belt of the moonlight across the water scarcely quivered. We leaned over the forward railing, and watched the silver inlaying on the edge of the wave turned off by the prow, and talked of things which come naturally at such a time-mysteries, and presentiments, and thoughts which are too wild for daylight. How strange it is Tom, that, in some moods of the mind, we cannot look upon the stars without a feeling that the dreamy theories which connect our fate with them are true! I do not dare to doubt astrology by starlight. There is an influence in their wild, spiritual shining' which makes my heart sink. It cannot be shaken off by reasoning. I observed, too, that my companions, several of whom were cool, unimaginative people, talked in subdued voices insensibly. Can it be possible that mere beauty has a 'presence '-something which is not the dream of a diseased fancy, but which a sound, healthy, animal heart feels-like a fear? Job has a philosophy about it, but he is too visionary. I doubted him when he said he knew what we had for supper.

Geneva shewed finely from the lake as we approached. The moon was setting, and the white buildings and spires crowning the immense black shadow of the ridge, looked as if built in the very sky. I do not know so sweet a village out of New England.

We parted from our fair friends the next morning. I had heard much of the beauty of Cayuga lake and its neighborhood, and with an aversion to a right line which I have had ever since I was called upon to define it, I struck off from the regular route, and took coach fifteen miles to Cayuga bridge, whence,' as the placard phrases it, the fast sailing steam boat Telemachus takes passengers daily to Ithaca.'

We had the coach to ourselves. Job sat in the corner watching the revolution of the wheel as if it were winding out his very brains, and pondering, I doubt not, every syllable that had melted on his ear for the last forty-eight hours. Allicholy is catching,' as somebody says in the play, and, drawing a long sigh from my very heart, and the Western Guide' from my coat pocket, I fixed myself down doggedly, to undergo, like a philosopher, three unavoidable hours of jolting and ennui.

The 'Telemachus' lay heaving to the indolent swell as we came in sight, and we hurried on board, glad to escape from the dull realities of dry land. How much more like magic it is to travel upon water! It is such an unutterable bore to be reminded so perpetually of one's materiality-to have every fraction of a mile measured in your bones, and marked by the broken threads of reflections, and the fragments of interrupted dreams! I never could conceive of the Cyrenaic philosophy which makes the pleasure of life consist in motion. How any one can have a passion for it on land, except upon C springs and a McAdam pavé, exceeds my comprehension. I question whether the greybeard ever suffered on a road of corduroy. He must have been thinking of a see-saw on a bench in the Academus, or a lounge in the Parthenon, after one of Zeno's lectures on continence.

The bell rang for departure, but nobody else came. The steward leaned over the railing with a long face, and a white towel in his hand; the black waiters sat whittling round the forecastle, and the Hebe of the ladies' cabin stood in the sacred door with her arms folded disconsolately across her yellow waist ribbon. Cast off,' grumbled the captain, as if he were giving a signal to an executioner, and away we floated, dull and solitary, on a six hours passage up the Cayuga. The day was excessively hot. The deck was oozing with pitch, fried out by the sun; the shores of the lake were flat and uninteresting, and we were both perfectly bedeviled with hyp. I soon explored the ladies' cabin-Dinah, and No admittance for gentlemen' to the contrary notwithstanding-and taking possession of the sofa (where, if the name of the boat is no misnomer, Calypso and her nymphs' should have lounged before me) I called for a port wine punch, sent Job to Coventry, and 'sleep,' as Coleridge says beautifully, slid into my soul.'

'

In the midst of a confused dream of women and waterfalls, moonshine and fried potatoes, I was called up to see Aurora '—not the 'fair daughter of the dawn,' as you will probably suppose, if you remember your Reader-but a pretty village on the east shore of the lake, with the usual proportion of red houses and steeples, and the dead look which a country town always has in the noon of a