tion of North Conway is, that it is a large natural poem in landscape. Up to the limit where art can come in as improvement, it is finished by the natural forces with a fine pencil. Every are of the circle which the eye breaks off by a direct gaze,-from the scarred gorges of the range that closes the view on the northwest, to the cheerful openness of the southerly outlook,-is a picture ready for the canvas, having definite sense, sentiment, and rhythm. When one enters it, it is the opening of a volume of divine verse, with strophe and antistrophe of mountain majesty, with eclogues, and idyls, and sonnets, and lyrics, wrought out of meadows and groves, and secluded nooks and leaping streams.

It would require more space than our volume will allow, to do justice to the various charms into which this wide circle of beauty is broken by walks and excursions and drives. One of the prominent pleasures of a clear and cool day is to find different points for studying Mount Washington. In what novelties of shape, dignity and effect he may be thrown by the rambles of a morning! We may see his steep, torn walls rising far off beyond a hill which we are ascending, and which hides from us most of the foreground in the village and the base on which the mountain stands; or may catch a glimpse of him through a couple of trees that stand sentinel to keep other mountains of the range from an intrusion that will reduce his majesty; or may seek a position over a grove whose breezy plumes afford the most cheerful contrast of motion and color to set off his gray grandeur and majestic rest; or from different points near the Saco may relate him, by changing angles, into fresh combinations with the level verdure of the meadows, or with some curve of its brooks, or some graceful thicket of its maples. Such a walk upon the meadows over its roughnesses, its occasional rods of marsh, its ditch here and there, useful to the farmer but not delightful to feet in search of the picturesque, its rickety fences to be climbed,-and all for the sake of catching a new attitude, or a new expression of the monarch hill of New England, certainly tempts one who is familiar with Stirling's poems to repeat to himself the lines

I looked upon a plain of green,

That some one called the Land of Prose,
Where many living things are seen,

In movement or repose.

I looked upon a stately hill

That well was named the Mount of Song,
Where golden shadows wait at will
The woods and streams among.

But most this fact my wonder bred,
Though known by all the nobly wise,
It was the mountain streams that fed
The fair green plain's amenities.

But let us remember that a climbing of Mount Washington, along the very track of those delicate dimples and golden-edged shadows, would make it seem intensely enough the "Land of Prose," while the poetry and the gold would have floated off upon the meadow, to efface all suggestion of ditches and marsh, and make it one strip of shaven and fascinating lawn. And we need not go so far as the nearest outwork of the White Mountain wall to see this poetry, which the lowlands always refer to the mountains, flung back again. The sunset bank, near the Kiarsarge House in the centre of Conway village, or still better, the roadside, near the little Methodist church on the edge of Bartlett, opens the meadow in such loveliness, that one might believe he was looking through an air that had never enwrapped any sin, upon a floor of some nook of the primitive Eden. What more appropriate reverence can we pay to this intervale, beyond all question, as seen from the point last mentioned, the most entrancing piece of meadow which New England mountains guard, or upon which the setting sun lavishes his gold, than to connect with it Mr. Ruskin's analysis of the beauty and apostrophe to the uses of the grass?

"Gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. Nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. A very little strength, and a little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point,— not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a

very

creditable or apparently much cared for example of Nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day and tomorrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food,-stately palm and pine, strong

ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine,-there be any by man so deeply loved, by God so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble

green.

"Consider what we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless and peaceful spears. The fields! Follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recog

nize in those words. All spring and summer is in them,-tne walks by silent scented paths, the rests in noonday heat,-the joy of herds and flocks, the power of all shepherd life and meditation,—the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and failing in soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust,-pictures beside the pacing brooks,-soft banks and knolls of lowly hills,-thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea,-crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices; all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,-paths that forever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,-look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, "He maketh grass to grow upon the mountains."

One of the favorite excursions of those who remain long in North Conway is to the "Ledges," Thompson's Falls, and Echo Lake, on the other side of the Saco, the extreme distance being only some three miles. The Falls flow down a spur of the Mote Mountain, just in the rear of the lower Ledge. The loose rocks are thrown about in such complete confusion that it strikes the eye, fresh from the finished

An

landscape around the meadows, as a patch of chaos too obstinate to
be organized into the general Cosmos. The highest of the Ledges,
which are bold, broad granite bluffs, rises about nine hundred and
sixty feet above the Saco. The river must be forded twice to reach
them, which adds greatly to the charm of the excursion. The lower
Ledge is almost perpendicular, and the jagged face of the rock, richly
weather-stained, reminds one of the Saguenay Cliffs, which it strongly
resembles also in the impression it makes by its soaring gloom.
easy climb of a hundred feet carries one to a singular cavity in this
Ledge, which visitors have named "The Cathedral." And truly the
waters, frosts and storms that scooped and grooved its curves and
niches, seemed to have combined in frolic mimicry of Gothic art.
The cave is forty feet in depth and about sixty in height, and the
outermost rock of the roofing spans the entrance with an arch, which,
half of the way, is as symmetrical as if an architect had planned it.
Was it skill or patience that the gnomes failed in, that excavated or
heaved it; or did they design to produce in their wild sport merely
torsos of the majesty of a great minster?

From this deep chasm, where quivering sunbeams play
Upon its loftiest crags, mine eyes behold
A gloomy Niche, capacious, blank, and cold;
A concave, free from shrubs and mosses gray;
In semblance fresh, as if, with dire affray,
Some statue, placed amid these regions old
For tutelary service, thence had rolled,
Startling the flight of timid Yesterday!
Was it by mortals sculptured?-weary slaves
Of slow endeavor! or abruptly cast

Into rude shape by fire, with roaring blast
Tempestuously let loose from central caves?

Or fashioned by the turbulence of waves,

Then, when o'er highest hills the Deluge pass'd?

The whole front of the recess is shaded by trees, which kindly stand apart just enough to frame off Kiarsarge in lovely symmetry,so that a more romantic resting place for an hour or two in a warm afternoon can hardly be imagined. We have said that the measure and spirit of "The Lotos Eaters" harmonize with the summer air