what he thought, on the whole, of the opposition party, and the expediency of forming a new cabinet, with Mr Tierney at the head. We are content to leave the case with this parallel to our fair visitant's candour, and feel quite sure, that though she and her friends may deny the justice of our argument, they will not call in question the good nature, with which we state it. We are aware how difficult it is to find a way of obtaining correct general views of the political relations of foreign countries; but we know that it is not the way, to take a zealous side with either of the parties in those controversies, where both are sure to be more or less in the wrong; or equally in the right.

Another passage in this lady's work will illustrate the difficulty to which we allude, and show her that even while making a deliberate correction of another, there is no security from committing as great an error as you rectify. Having observed that she must here refute a strange assertion, which she has seen in many foreign journals, namely, that the United States' government is chargeable with the diffusion of black slavery,' she adds the following note:

'One of the most extravagant blunders of this kind I lately found in M'Kensie's History of America; a work comprising much valuable topographical and statistical information upon the subject of the United States; but containing a compilation of the most contradictory and positively ludicrous portraits of their moral character (to those at least who have any personal acquaintance with it) that has yet come under my eye. The passage I allude to is the following: "Negro slavery has spread its baleful effects over a great part of the Union. Some writers, particularly Englishmen, who would wish to represent the states as a second Arcadia, have offered an apology for this detestable practice, by contending, that it formed a part of the policy of the colonial system; but this excuse does not apply to the new states; for the congress has resigned the inhabitants of these vast regions to its demoralizing effects." Now were this all that stood between the United States and a second Arcadia, they would be much nearer a terrestrial paradise than i had imagined. Not a single one of the new states that has grown up under the jurisdiction of the congress, but has been positively and absolutely saved by its laws from slavery in any shape or form whatsoever. It would save some mistakes, if authors would read the laws of foreign countries, before they write about them.' p. 288.

Now, leaving the merits of the Missouri question out of view,

to which this lady alludes, and of the fate of which she was aware, how could she have read even one of the formal speeches made in the House of Representatives, while this question was pending, without becoming acquainted with many examples, in direct contradiction to her assertion; an assertion which, as every American knows, is true only of the states formed out of the territory north-west of the Ohio.

But we have swerved from our purpose, even in this allusion, which is intended to be any thing but unkind, towards some of the little blemishes in our fair champion's work; and we commend a number of little errors in names, persons, and facts, to that grateful indulgence, which so friendly a spirit ought to awaken in the American reader. The work is in fact an eulogium on our country and its character; a panegyric of the warmest cast. The discreet citizen will place it before him as the model, toward which he should strive to bring his country, rather than as a tablet of actual perfections, of which in every case he has now a right to boast. Though many of the observations of this lady take a wide range, her actual travels in the country were not extensive, having been bounded, if we have rightly remarked, by Washington on the south, and New York on the east; including a tour to Niagara through the western part of New York, and the return to that city, by the way of Lake Champlain. The tour to Niagara is one of the best portions of the book, and we cannot but think the following extracts will afford great pleasure to those few of our readers, who have not already possessed themselves of the entire work. After some glowing remarks on the approach to the fall, our eloquent tourist continues as follows:

It is but an inconsiderable portion of this imprisoned sea which flows on the American side; but even this were sufficient to fix the eye in admiration. Descending the ladder (now easy steps) and approaching to the foot of this lesser Fall, we were driven away blinded, breathless, and smarting, the wind being high and blowing right against us. A young gentleman, who incautiously ventured a few steps farther, was thrown upon his back, and I had some apprehension, from the nature of the ground upon which he fell, was seriously hurt; he escaped, however, from the blast, upon hands and knees, with a few slight bruises. Turning a corner of the rock (where, descending less precipitously, it is wooded to the bottom) to recover our breath, and wring the water from our hair and clothes, we saw, on lifting our eyes, a corner of the summit of this graceful division of the cataract hanging

above the projecting mass of trees, as it were in mid air, like the snowy top of a mountain. Above, the dazzling white of the shivered water was thrown into contrast with the deep blue of the unspotted heavens; below, with the living green of the summer foliage, fresh and sparkling in the eternal shower of the rising and falling spray. The wind, which for the space of an hour, blew with some fury, rushing down with the river, flung showers of spray from the crest of the fall. The sun's rays, glancing on these big drops, and sometimes on feathery streams thrown fantastically from the main body of the water, transformed them into silvery stars, or beams of light; while the graceful rainbow, now arching over our heads, and now circling in the vapour at our feet, still flew before us as we moved. The greater division of the cataract was here concealed from our sight by the dense volumes of vapour which the wind drove with fury across the immense basin directly towards us; sometimes indeed a veering gust parted for a moment the thick clouds, and partially revealed the heavy columns, that seemed more like fixed pillars of moving emerald, than living sheets of water. Here, seating ourselves at the brink of this troubled ocean, beneath the gaze of the sun, we had the full advantage of a vapour bath; the fervid rays drying our garments one moment, and a blast from the basin drenching them the next. The wind at length having somewhat abated, and the ferryman being willing to attempt the passage, we here crossed in a little boat to the Canada side. The nervous arm of a single rower stemmed this heavy current, just below the basin of the Falls, and yet in the whirl occasioned by them; the stormy north-west at this moment chafing the waters yet more. Blinded as we were by the columns of vapour which were driven upon us, we lost the panoramic view of the cataract, which, in calmer hours, or with other winds, may be seen in this passage. The angry waters, and the angry winds together, drove us farther down the channel than was quite agreeable, seeing that a few rods more, and our shallop must have been whirled into breakers, from which ten such arms as those of its skilful conductor could not have redeemed it.

Being landed two-thirds of a mile below the cataract, a scramble, at first very intricate, through, and over, and under huge masses of rock, which occasionally seemed to deny all passage, and among which our guide often disappeared from our wandering eyes, placed us at the foot of the ladder by which the traveller descends on the Canada side. From hence a rough walk along a shelving ledge of loose stones brought us to the cavern formed by the projection of the ledge over which the water rolls, and which is known by the name of the Table Rock.

The gloom of this vast cavern, the whirlwind that ever plays

in it, the deafening roar, the vast abyss of convulsed waters beneath you, the falling columns that hang over your head, all strike, not upon the ears and eyes only, but upon the heart. For the first few moments, the sublime is wrought to the terrible. This position, indisputably the finest, is no longer one of safety. A part of the Table Rock fell last year, and in that still remaining, the eye traces an alarming fissure, from the very summit of the projecting ledge over which the water rolls; so that the ceiling of this dark cavern seems rent from the precipice, and whatever be its hold, it is evidently fast yielding to the pressure of the water. You cannot look up to this crevice, and down upon the enormous masses which lately fell, with a shock mistaken by the neighbouring inhabitants for that of an earthquake, without shrinking at the dreadful possibility which might crush you beneath ruins, yet more enormous than those which lie at your feet.

The cavern formed by the projection of this rock, extends some feet behind the water, and, could you breathe, to stand behind the edge of the sheet were perfectly easy. I have seen those who have told me they have done so for myself, when I descended within a few paces of this dark recess, I was obliged to hury back some yards to draw breath. Mine to be sure are not the best of lungs, but theirs must be little short of miraculous, that can play in the wind and foam that gush from the hidden depths of this watery cave. It is probable, however, that the late fracture of the rock has considerably narrowed this recess; and thus increased the force of the blast that meets the intruder.

From this spot, (beneath the Table Rock,) you feel, more than from any other, the height of the cataract, and the weight of its waters. It seems a tumbling ocean; and you yourself, what a helpless atom amid these vast and eternal workings of gigantic nature! The wind had now abated, and what was better, we were now under the lee, and could admire its sport with the vapour, instead of being blinded by it. From the enormous basin, into which the waters precipitate themselves in a clear leap of one hundred and forty feet, the clouds of smoke rose in white volumes, like the round-headed clouds you have sometimes seen in the evening horizon of a summer sky, and then shot up in pointed pinnacles, like the ice of mountain glacières. Caught by the wind, it was now borne down the channel, then, re-collecting its strength, the tremulous vapour again sought the upper air, till, broken and dispersed in the blue serene, it spread against it the only silvery veil which spotted the pure azure. In the centre of the Fall, where the water is the heaviest, it takes the leap in an unbroken mass of the deepest green, and in many places reaches the bottom in crystal columns of the same hue, till they meet the snow-white foam that heaves and rolls convulsedly in the enor

mous basin. But for the deafening roar, the darkness and the stormy whirlwind in which we stood, I could have fancied these massy volumes the walls of some fairy palace-living emeralds chased in silver. Never surely did nature throw together so fantastically so much beauty with such terrific grandeur. Nor let me pass without notice the lovely rainbow, that, at this moment, hung over the opposing division of the cataract as parted by the island, embracing the whole breadth in its span. Midway of this silvery screen of shivered water, stretched a broad belt of blazing gold and crimson, into which the rainbow dropped its hues, and seemed to have based its arch. Different from all other scenes of nature that have come under my observation, the cataract of Niagara is seen to most advantage under a powerful and opposing sun: the hues assumed by the vapour are then by far the most varied and brilliant; and of the beauty of these hues I can give you no idea. The gloom of the cavern (for I speak always as if under the Table Rock) needs no assistance from the shade of evening; and the terrible grandeur of the whole is not felt the less for being distinctly seen. We now ascended the precipice on the Canada side, and, having taken a long gaze from the Table Rock, sought dry clothes and refreshment at a neighbouring inn.

We have again visited this wonder of nature in our return from lake Erie; and have now gazed upon it in all lights, and at all hours,-under the rising meridian, and setting sun, and under the pale moon, when

"Riding in her highest noon."

The edge of the Table Rock is not approached without terror at the latter hour. The fairy hues are now all gone; excepting, indeed, the rainbow, which, the ghost of what it was, now spans a dark impervious abyss. The rays of the sweet planet but feebly pierce the chill dense vapour that clogs the atmosphere; they only kiss, and coldly kiss, the waters at the brink, and faintly show the upper half of the columns, now black as ebony, plunging into a storm-tossed sea of murky clouds, whose depth and boundaries are alike unseen. It is the storm of the elements in chaos. The shivering mortal stands on the brink, like the startled fiend

"On the bare outside of this world,

Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.”

"La buja campagna

Tremò si forte, che dello spavento

La mente di sudore ancor mi bagna."

pp. 175-180.

The description of the destruction of the steam boat Phoenix, on lake Champlain, is also done with the pen of a powerful mistress: