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Or night-dews on still waters between walls

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies

Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,

And through the noss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

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And then the sunsets of North Conway! Coleridge asked Mont Blanc if he had "a charm to stay the morning star in his steep course." It is time for some poet to put the question to those bewitching elm-sprinkled acres that border the Saco, by what sorcery

they evoke, evening after evening, upon the heavens that watch them, such lavish and Italian bloom. Nay it is not Italian, for the basis of its beauty is pure blue, and the skies of Italy are not nearly so blue as those of New England. One sees more clear sky in eight summer weeks in Conway, probably, than in the compass of an Italian year. The air of Italy is more opalescent, and seems to hold the light in luscious repose, and yet a little unsteady in tint. But for pomp of bright, clear, contrasted flames on a deep and transparent sky, the visitors of North Conway, on the sunset bank that overlooks the meadows, enjoy the frequent privilege of a spectacle which the sun sinking behind the Notch conjures for them, such as he rarely displays to the dwellers by the Arno or the inhabitants of Naples. How often have we seen such shows from that bank, while the evening song of birds came up from the near orchards and the distant maplegroves of the meadows below, as it seemed too wasteful in Nature to have prepared for the fading canopy of one small village and of one summer evening! Then was the time for the miracle of Joshua-for some artist-priest, like Turner, to bid the sun stand still, that such gorgeousness might be a garniture of more than a few rapid moments upon the cloud-flecked pavilion of the air. And as the brightness burned off from the hills behind, and the hastening fire mounted from the lower clouds to stain the cirrus, and the west began to glow with the upcast beams of the sunken sun, one could not but feel the aspiration connected with the fleeting magnificence of sunset, which is not the least marvellous passage of Goethe's Faust. We are indebted for the translation to the kindness of a friend, whose knowledge of German is equalled only by his artistic command of English, and who has given a full equivalent of the original in rhythm and grace. He yields, he vanishes, the day is gone,

Yonder he speeds, and sheds new life forever.

O had I wings to rise and follow on
Still after him with fond endeavor!

Then should I see beneath my feet

The still world's everlasting vesper,

Each summit tipp'd with fire, each valley's silence sweet.
The silver brook, the river's molten jasper.

And nought should stay my God-competing flight,
Though savage mountains now with all their ravines,
And now the ocean with its tempered havens,
Successive greet the astonished sight.

The God at length appears as he were sinking;
But still the impulse is renewed,

I hasten on, the light eternal drinking,

The day pursuing, by the night pursued,

The heavens above, and under me the billows.

A pleasant dream! Meanwhile the sun has fled.

In vain, alas! the spirit's wings are spread,
Never will bodily wings appear as fellows.

Of course it must not be understood that North Conway is always thus beautiful. The sunshine, even when the days are clear, sometimes produces only journey-work. Besides the prismatic beams and the actinic ray, there is the artistic quality in the light which, at times, refuses to leave its fountains, and the scene is prosaic. Now and then the Saco, swelled by the bounty of a score of mountain heights, overflows its bed, sweeps the whole surface of the intervale, and mounts to the very edge of the bank on which the village is built. We cannot prophesy these baptisms. So we cannot tell when the spiritual heights from which Nature issues will unseal their opulence, and send the freshet of bloom,-when the "finer light in light" will break its bounds and give us

one of the charméd days When the genius of God doth flow,

and the whole valley will turn into a goblet, brimming with beauty too liberal to be contained by the mountain walls that are tinted with its weird waves. By hurrying through the mountains, we may lose the luxury and revelations of one of these ineffable atmospheres, when Italy and New England seem interfused, and the light is a compound of molten diamond and opal.

In his drawing of North Conway, too, our artist has softened and improved the village portion of its physiognomy. One cannot help being struck with its capacity of improvement. If some duke, or merchant-prince with unlimited income, could put the resources of landscape taste upon it, adorn it with cottages, hedge the farms upon

the meadows, span the road with elms, cultivate the border-hills as far up as there is good soil, the village might be made as lovely a spot as it would be possible to combine out of the elements of New England scenery. The beauty of the place may be measured by the fact, that, when it was first sought for summer boarding or residence, people seldom noticed the inversion of taste which was shown in the arrangement of the houses and grounds. The barns in the most sightly places, the ugly fences on the intervale, the sandy banks that begged for sods to prevent them from fretting and heating the eyes, which on a sultry day turn towards the cool verdure below, were drowned out of offending prominence by the overpowering loveliness that enveloped them.

One can hardly conceive what heightened charm a very little cultivation on the sides of a mountain will add to the landscape. Mr. Emerson has interpreted the friendship of Nature for human art, in those lines that sing themselves now through the whole cultivated mind of our country :—

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;

And Morning opes with haste her lids,

To gaze upon the Pyramids;

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends a kindred eye;
For out of Thought's interior sphere,
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,

And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

We have seen a common rye-field of some fifty acres on the slope of Mount Moriah, in the Androscoggin Valley, which made a visit to the village of Gorham a greater delight, by the addition of its strong and lively green to the drapery of the mountain, and the exquisite contrast, at evening, of its gold with the tender purple of the forests above. Nature had plainly been longing for the necessity of the agriculture that would bind a new sheaf for her harvest of hues, and

suggest how the monotonous mountain robe might be changed for the brocade of art. This change has commenced in North Conway. Tasteful residences have already begun to sprinkle the village; and although we may not live to see Kiarsarge draped with farms, or the desolation of the Mote Mountain blossom as the rose, it is possible that the general charm of the "Invitation" which one of our own poets, who is a faithful lover of North Conway, has inwoven with his verse, may yet in our lifetime be added to the natural enticements of the landscape :

The warm wide hills are muffled thick with green,
And fluttering swallows fill the air with song.
Come to our cottage-home. Lowly it stands,
Set in a vale of flowers, deep fringed with grass.
The sweetbrier (noiseless herald of the place)
Flies with its odor, meeting all who roam
With welcome footsteps to our small abode.
No splendid cares live here-no barren shows.
The bee makes harbor at our perfumed door,
And hums all day his breezy note of joy.

Come, O my friend! and share our festal month,
And while the west wind walks the leafy woods,
While orchard-blooms are white in all the lanes,
And brooks make music in the deep, cool dells,
Enjoy the golden moments as they pass,

And gain new strength for days that are to come.

When the time comes that this poetry by Fields shall be the type of the cultivation in the village, North Conway will be lifted out of the New Hampshire county in which it is taxed, and be the adytum of a temple where God is to be worshipped as the Infinite Artist, in joy.

We may catch a glimpse of the life which the scenery of the village was created to enclose, through an extract from a letter which once enriched the columns of the Boston "Journal of Music." Of course it is from the pen of the accomplished editor, whose fine sense for natural beauty is in chord with his cultured appreciation of the most spiritual of the arts. "Sit down with us upon the door-step here of our friend's hospitable summer home, just as the sun of a most gorgeous day goes down behind the long level ridge of the

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