BARHYDT'S LAKE, NEAR SARATOGA.

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their beds by the most powerful agents of nature, corroborate the impression. But the distant finishing which nature has given to the picture, is of a very different character; it is a true contrast to the fore-ground; it is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous; for the mountain being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite. distance in the plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around, to pass through the breach and participate of the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Potomac above the junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, its terrible precipices hanging in fragments over you, and, within about twenty miles, reach Fredericktown, and the fine country round that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic; yet here, as in the neighbourhood of the Natural Bridge, are people who have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and mountains, which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre."

BARHYDT'S LAKE, NEAR SARATOGA.

I DROVE to Barhydt's Lake, with the accomplished artist whose name is at the bottom of the drawing, on one of the finest days of early September. With a pair of crop ponies, whose going, simply, we acknowledged we had never seen beaten on the smooth roads of England, and a day over our heads of the most inspiriting freshness, we dashed through the pine woods of Saratoga in a light waggon, and pulled up at Barhydt's door in twenty minutes from leaving the Springs.

The old man sat under his Dutch stoup, smoking his pipe, and suffered us to tie our ponies to his fence without stirring; and in answer to our inquiries if there was a boat on the lake, simply nodded an assent, and pointed to the water's edge. Whether this indifference to strangers is indolence merely, or whether Herr Barhydt does not choose to be considered an inn-keeper, no one is enough in his secrets to divine. He will give you a dram, or cook you a dinner of trout, and

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BARHYDT'S LAKE, NEAR SARATOGA.

seems not only indifferent whether you like his fish or his liquor, but quite as indifferent whether and what you pay him. In his way, Herr Barhydt is kind and courteous.

We descended to the lake, and after pulling up to the upper extremity where the view is taken, we returned to partake of the old Dutchman's hospitality, and have a little conversation with him. Among other things, we asked him if he was aware that he had been put in a book.

"I've hearn tell on't," said he; "a Mr. Wilkins, or Watkins, has writ something about me, but I don't know why. I never did him no harm as I know on.”

We had not the book to show the injured old gentleman his picture, but as it happens to lie by us now, and really contains a very literal description of the spot, we will copy out the extract:

"Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the mineral springs of Saratoga were discovered some four miles from his door, was buried in the depth of a forest unknown to all but the prowling Indian. The sky is supported above him, (or looks to be,) by a wilderness of straight columnar pine-shafts, gigantic in girth, and with no foliage except at the top, where they branch out like round tables spread for a banquet in the clouds. A small ear-shaped lake, sunk as deep into the earth as the firs shoot above it, and clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl-spots of the thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the blue eye of heaven, sleeps beneath his window; and around him in the forest, lies, still unbroken, the elastic and brown carpet of the faded pine-tassels, deposited in yearly layers since the continent first rose from the flood, and rotted a foot beneath the surface to a rich mould that would fatten the Symplegades to a flower-garden. With his black tarn well stocked with trout, his bit of a farm in the clearing near by, and an old Dutch Bible, Herr Barhydt lived a life of Dutch musing, talked Dutch to his geese and chickens, sung Dutch psalms to the echoes of the mighty forest, and, except on his far-between visits to Albany, which grew rarer and rarer as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster away, saw never a white human face from one mapleblossoming to another.

"A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga, and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up sprung a thriving village around the fountain's lip; and hotels, tin-tumblers, and apothecaries, multiplied in the usual proportion to each other, but out of all precedent with every thing else for rapidity. Libraries, newspapers, churches, livery-stables, and lawyers, followed in their train; and it was soon established, from the plains of Abraham to the Savannahs of Alabama, that no person of fashionable taste or broken constitution could exist through the months of July and August without a visit to the chalybeate springs and populous village of Saratoga. It contained seven thousand inhabitants before Herr Barhydt, living

FAIR MOUNT GARDENS, PHILADELPHIA.

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A pair

in his forest seclusion only four miles off, became aware of its existence. of loons, philandering about the forest on horseback, popped in upon him one June morning, and thenceforth there was no rest for the soul of the Dutchman. Everybody rode down to eat his trout, and make love in the dark shades of his mirrored. lagoon; and, at last, in self-defence, he added a room or two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-garden, and set a price on his trout dinners. The traveller, now-a-days, who has not dined at Barhydt's, with his own champagne cold from the tarn, and the white-headed old settler 'gargling' Dutch. about the house in his maniform vocation of cook, ostler, and waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara."

FAIR MOUNT GARDENS, PHILADELPHIA.

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THE walks here, though not extensive, are delightful, from the views they command over the Schuylkill. In the early days of William Penn, this side of the river was covered by a thick wood; and so late as Franklin's time, (who frequented it," says the annalist, "with his companions, Osborne, Watson, and Ralph," the banks afforded a secluded and rural retreat, much resorted to by swimmers. The name of Schuylkill, given it by the Dutch, is said to express "Hidden River," as its mouth is not visible in ascending the Delaware. The Indians called it by a name, meaning "The Mother;" and a small branch of the Schuylkill, higher up, called "Maiden Creek," was named by them, Ontelaunee, meaning "the little daughter of a great mother."

The Schuylkill and Delaware, in former days, were the scenes of feats in swimming and skaiting, which are not emulated in these graver times. The colonial annals record the achievements of George Tyson, a fat broker, weighing one hundred and ninety pounds; and "Governor Mifflin, and Joe Claypoole," descend on the page of history as the best skaiters of Pennsylvania. The annalist enters on this theme with great unction. "During the old-fashioned winters, when about New-year's day every one expected to see or hear of an ox-roast on the river, upon the thick-ribbed ice, which, without causing much alarm among the thousands moving in all directions upon its surface, would crack and rend itself by its own