Are they become mere tenants of a tomb ?— 15 And with our frames do perish all our loves? Do those that took their root, and put forth buds, And their soft leaves unfolded, in the warmth Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty, Then fade and fall, like fair unconscious flowers? 20 Are thoughts and passions, that to the tongue give speech, And make it send forth winning harmonies, That to the cheek do give its living glow, And vision in the eye the soul intense With that for which there is no utterance,25 Are these the body's accidents ?—no more?— To live in it, and, when that dies, go out Like the burnt taper's flame? Oh! listen, man! A voice within us speaks that startling word, 35 Thick clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, Oh! listen, ye, our spirits; drink it in From all the air. 'Tis in the gentle moonlight; 40 'Tis floating midst Day's setting glories; Night, Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step Comes to our bed, and breathes it in our ears : All time, all bounds, the limitless expanse, 5 The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth LESSON CXXXVIII.-THE GRAY OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.HARRY HIBBARD. 5 10 15 20 [A Natural Image in Franconia Mountain Notch.] Where a tall post beside the road displays ? Through the small opening mid the green birch trees, The compass of his plastic art to try. From the curved neck up to the shaggy hair To cheat the expecting eye with fancied forms of air! Most wondrous vision! the broad earth hath not, More fit to stir the poet's phantasy. Gray Old Man of the Mountain, awfully There from thy wreath of clouds thou dost uprear 25 Those features grand, the same eternally! 30 Lone dweller mid the hills! with gaze austere And curious travellers have descried the trace Of the sage Franklin's physiognomy In that most grave and philosophic face. If it be true, Old Man, that we do see Sage Franklin's countenance, thou indeed must be A learned philosopher most wise and staid, Since Earth began. Here thou, too, oft hast played With lightnings, glancing round thy rugged head. LESSON CXXXIX.-THE NOVEL READER.-CHARLES SPRAGUE. Look now, directed by yon candle's blaze, Its curtain round her polished shoulders spread: Still she reads on,-in fiction's labyrinth lost, She shuts the dear, dear book, that made her weep, LESSON CXL.-MOUNTAINS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.-ISAAC HILL. The highest mountains, within the known limits of the old thirteen United States, are the cluster in New Hampshire, called the White Mountains. These mountains are supposed to be older than any of the ranges of high 5 mountains in Europe. Mont Blanc, and Mont St. Bernard, may peer above them, and reach their tops beyond the line of perpetual congelation; but Mount Washington had been thousands of years in existence, before the internal fires upheaved the European Alps. The beauty and grandeur of scenery in Scotland, or 5 Switzerland, or any other country of Europe, cannot exceed that of this mountain region. What magnificent landscape will compare with the different views at the Notch; with the Silver Cascade, half a mile from its 'entrance, issuing from the mountain eight hundred feet 10 above the subjacent valley, passing over, almost perpendicularly, a series of rocks so little broken, as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current, and yet so far disturbed, as to be perfectly white;-with the Flume, at no great distance, falling over three precipices, from the 15 height of two hundred and fifty feet, down the two first in a single current, and over the last in three, uniting again at the bottom in a basin, formed by the hand of Nature, perhaps by the wearing of the waters, in the rocks ;-with the impending rocks, directly overhead on either side, to a vast 20 height, rent asunder by that Power which first upheaved the mountains, leaving barely space for the head stream of the Saco, and the road to pass;-with the track of the awful avalanches, at no great distance, on either side, coming down from the height, throwing rocks, trees, and 25 earth across the defile, damming up the stream, and forcing it to seek new channels, and covering up or carrying away, clean to the surface of the hard rock, the long travelled road! If the eye is not here sated, with the grandeur and 30 beauty of the stupendous works of the Almighty, and the changes he has wrought, let the traveller pass into the Franconia Notch, near the source of the Merrimack river, twenty miles southerly of the White Mountain Notch. The Man of the Mountain has long been personated 35 and apostrophized; his covered head is the sure forerunner of the thunder shower or storm; and, in the world of fiction, he is made the main agent of the mountain genii, who bewilder and mislead the benighted traveller, and whose lodgment is in the rocky_caverns, hitherto unfre40 quented by the human tread. The Profile is perched at the height of more than a thousand feet: the solid rock presents a side view or profile of the human face, every feature of which, in the due proportion, is conspicuous. It is no inanimate profile: it looks the living man, as if his voice could reach to the proportionate distance of his greater size. The mountain region of New Hampshire, has been denominated the Switzerland of America. Our scenery 5 is surpassed, in beauty, by no scenery on earth. Coming down from our mountains, I would direct your attention to our beautiful lakes. The eye never traced a more splendid prospect, than the view from Red Hill. The view from Mount Washington, shows the high moun10 tains around, as successive dark waves of the sea, at your feet, and all other objects, the villages and the sea, as more indistinct from their distance. The view from Red Hill, an elevation of some twentyfive hundred feet, which is gained on horseback, brings 15 all objects distinctly to the naked eye. On the one hand, the Winnipiseogee lake, twenty-two miles in length, with its bays, and islands, and surrounding villages, and farms of parti-colored fields, spreads out like a field of glass, at the southeast. Loch Lomond, with all its splendor and 20 beauty, presents no scenery that is not equalled in the environs of the Winnipiseogee. Its suite of hills and mountains, serves as a contrast, to increase its splendor. We stand upon the higher of the three points of Red Hill, limited everywhere by regular circular lines, and elegant 25 in its figure beyond most other mountains. The autumnal foliage, overspreading the ranges of mountains, in the season after vegetation has been arrested by the frosts, is a beauty in our scenery that has never been described by any inhabitant of Great Britain, because no such 30 scenery ever there existed. If Mr. Jefferson thought a single point upon the Potomac, where that river breaks through the Blue Ridge, to be worth, to the European observer, a voyage across the Atlantic, will it be deemed extravagant, if I should say to 35 the inhabitants of a town or city of the United States, anywhere along the Atlantic Ocean, that the Notch of the White Hills, the Notch of the Franconia mountains, the Cascade, or the Flume, or the Face of the Old Man, or the view from Red Hill, one alone, or all together, are 40 worth ten times the expense and labor of a journey of one hundred, five hundred, or one thousand miles? |