curves as fluent and graceful as the fluttering of a long pennant from a masthead. The whole mass of the mountain, moreover, is clothed with the richest foliage, unscarred by any land-slide, unbroken by any ravages of storm and frost, even in its ravines.

These lines look peculiarly charming if they can be seen when a

southerly rain is just commencing, or when a light shower falls upon them, but does not wrap the ridge in cloud. Does the reader remember Leigh Hunt's description of a sudden shower in the country?

As I stood thus, a neighboring wood of elms
Was moved, and stirred, and whispered loftily

Much like a pomp of warriors with plumed helms,
When some great general, whom they long to see,
Is heard behind them, coming in swift dignity;
And then there fled by me a rush of air,
That stirred up all the other foliage there,
Filling the solitude with panting tongues;
At which the pines woke up into their songs,
Shaking their choral locks; and on the place
There fell a shade, as on an awe-struck face;
And overhead, like a portentous rim

Pulled over the wide world, to make all dim,
A grave, gigantic cloud came hugely uplifting him.

It passed with its slow shadow; and I saw
Where it went down beyond me on a plain,
Sloping its dusky ladders of thick rain;
And on the mist it made, and blinding awe,
The sun reissuing in the opposite sky,
Struck the all-colored arch of his great eye,
And the disburdened country laughed again,
The leaves were amber; the sunshine

Scored on the ground its conquering line;

And the quick birds, for scorn of the great cloud,
Like children after fear, were merry and loud.

Frequently it has been our fortune to see a shower thus sweep down the Androscoggin Valley, and as it thinned out, trail the softest veils over the Moriah range. And how much more gentle and soothing its outline appeared when the warm rain-drops were woven into broad webs of gossamer to mark the ridges more distinctly, line behind line, and show their figure in more refined pencilling against the damp sky!

see the more rugged Turning from North

As a general thing, Gorham is the place to sculpturing and the Titanic brawn of the hills. Conway to the Androscoggin Valley is somewhat like turning from a volume of Tennyson to the pages of Carlyle; from the melodies of Don Giovanni to the surges of the Ninth Symphony; from the art of Raffaello to that of Michel Angelo. But nothing can be more graceful and seductive than the flow of these lines of Mount Moriah seen through such a veil. They do not suggest any violent internal forces. It should seem that they rose to melody, as when Amphion played his

lyre, and saw the stones move by rhythmic masonry to the place where they were wanted. And the beauty is the more effective by contrast with the sternness and vigor of the lines of Adams and Madison, that can be seen from the same point near the Androscoggin, where we suppose ourselves to look at Mount Moriah. They are Ebal, representing the terrors of the law; this is Gerizim, the hill of blessing. Or shall we not rather contrast Mount Adams and Mount

Moriah by the aid of a charming sonnet of Percival, which one might think had been written at evening, in full view of these rivals in the landscape, where the Androscoggin bends around Mount Hayes.

Behold yon hills. The one is fresh and fair;
The other rudely great. New-springing green
Mantles the one; and on its top the star

Of love, in all its tenderest light, is seen.

Island of joys! how sweet thy gentle rays

Issue from heaven's blue depths in evening's prime!
But round yon bolder height no softness plays,

Nor flower nor bud adorns its front sublime.

Rude, but in majesty, it mounts in air,

And on its summit Jove in glory burns;

'Mid all the stars that pour their radiant urns,

None with that lordly planet may compare.

But see, they move; and, tinged with love's own hue,
Beauty and Power embrace in heaven's serenest blue.

The charming picture of the marriage of these planets reminds us that we must not pass without notice the loveliness of the nights, when the full moon rises over the ridge of Mount Moriah and looks down into the valley, "shut out from the rude world by Alpine hills."

See yonder fire! it is the moon
Slow rising o'er the eastern hill.

It glimmers on the forest tips,

And through the dewy foliage drips

In little rivulets of light,

And makes the heart in love with night.

We do not know any other resting-place near the Washington range, where one of the higher hills is so fortunately related to the landscape, as Mount Moriah, for showing the peculiar effect of the moon upon the mountain lines, and the witcheries of its refulgence upon the mountain sides and ravines. Kiarsarge is the most favorable eminence from which to look down upon a moonlight landscape; Gorham gives the best position for enjoying the moonlight upon the hills.

Many persons imagine that the mountains must seem higher under the moon than in the daylight, when the sun shows all their foreground. But the moonlight strangely flattens them. They do not look half so high under a zenith moon as in the noontime of a clear day. A thick air, or a shower streaming before them and taking out much of their robustness, has the effect of lifting them much higher; but when all color is drawn from them, and they stand in mere pencillings of black shadow and silver, their outlines are less firm, and they are lowered into mounds.

Yet, to an artist's eye, the effects of moonlight, when it climbs from behind and overflows a mountain, are unspeakably fascinating. There is quite a large log-house on the thin crest of Mount Moriah, and once in the season the full moon rises directly over that hut,

She cometh,-lovelier than the dawn,

In summer, when the leaves are green,
More graceful than the alarmed fawn,
Over his grassy supper seen;
Bright quiet from her beauty falls.

After it climbs above the hut, the deep blue darkness of the mountain begins to catch delicate tinges of the pale, weak light which flows