NIAGARA.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 70, 25 March 1869, Page 2

NIAGARA.

The Rev. W. M. Punshon thus describes the Falls of Niagara: — On my way from Buff-do to Toronto I caught the first sight of that wondrous vision which it is worth a pilgrimage from England to see, I have since had an opportunity of making it a study, and my conviction is that if there is anything in the world which defies at once description and analysis, and which' excites in the beholder by turns ideas of grandeur, beauty, terror, power, sublimity, it is expressed in that one word, " Niagara." I have seen it in most of its summer aspects. I have gazed upon the marvellous panorama from the Rapids above, to the " whirlpool," three miles below. I have looked up to it from the river, and down upon it from the Terrapin Tower. I have bathed in its light, and been drenched with its spray. I have dreamed over it through the hot afternoon, and have heard it thunder in the watches of the night. On all tlie headlands, and on all the islands, I have stood entranced and wondering while the mist has shrouded it, and while the sun has broken it into rainbows. I have seen it fleecy as the snow-flake ; deepening into the brightest emerald ; dark and leaden as the angriest November sky — but in all its moods there is instruction, solemnity, delight. Stable in its perpetual instability; changeless in its everlasting change; a thing to be " pondered in the heart," like the Revelation by the meek Virgin of old ; with no pride in the brilliant hues which are woven in its eternal loom; with no haste in the majestic roll of its waters; with no weariness in its endless psalm ; it remains through the eventful years an embodiment of unconscious power, a lively inspiration of thought, and poetry, and worship — a magnificent apocalypse of God. One wonderful thing about Niagara is that it survives all attempts to make it common. Like all show places, it has its Arab hordes— Bedouins of the road, of the caravausary, of the river. All along the line, from the burning spring to the negro touter-*. who press upon you that "there is no charge for the charming view," and down to the spot where, with sublime contempt of nature and indifference to truth, a notice-board announces that "the whirlpool is closed on Sundays;" Niagara is a graud institution for making people pay. Of course, also, it is the excursion terminus for all the country round, and during the season attracts crowds that would make Wordsworth as angry as when he denounced the railway which was to profane his own?sylph-j haunted Rydal — but these cannot vulgarise it — rather, it ennobles them, kindling in the most insensate breast an awe and a rapture of which they had hardly thought themselves capable before.