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tains! Do we see the two peaks that were so fascinating at the Falls below? They have received an addition to their company. There are three now. Mount Washington has lifted his head into sight behind Madison, and has pushed out the long outline of the

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ridge that climbs from the Pinkham forest, and by all the stairways of his plateaus, to his cold and rugged crown. What a majestic trio! What breadth and mass, and yet what nervous contours! The mountains are arranged in half circle, so that we see each summit perfectly defined, and have the outline of each on its character

istic side lying sharp against the sky,-Adams as it is braced from the north, Madison from the southeast, Washington from the south. They hide the other summits of the range completely. And from our position we look down the long avenue of hills that guard the Androscoggin, and over the wilderness from which they spring, and see them from a height very favorable for revealing their elevation, and through a sufficient depth of air to give them both distinctness and bloom.

Is it not something to mourn over, that the spectacle of this bivouac of hills should have been so seldom seen by tourists in New Hampshire? Many thousands visit the White Mountains in the summer weeks, and not fifty have as yet looked upon this landscape, so easily attained by a drive of an hour and a half from the hotel in Gorham. Up to the time of our writing these pages, more people in England have enjoyed this view through a painting of it by the artist whose sketch is here presented to our readers, and who sent it abroad in answer to an order, than in our own country have seen the Creator's original. We shall be glad if anything in this unworthy description proves a temptation to future visitors of the eastern valley of the mountains to take this drive towards Milan in a clear afternoon, and thus add such a powerful combination of the mountain forms, dimpled and flushed too with countless shadows and tints, to the treasures of their memory.

It is worth while to take the additional few miles of ride above Berlin Falls to the point where we are now resting, in order to see the river so calm. On a still afternoon it sleeps here as though it had not been troubled above, and had no more hard fortune to encounter below. This level passage in its history, where it coaxes the grasses and trees of its shores down into its silence, as the waterspirit of Goethe's ballad seduced the Fisher into the stream, is kindred with the quiet of the English river, above its cataract, which Wordsworth thus describes :—

The old inventive Poets, had they seen,

Or rather felt, the entrancement that detains

Thy waters, Duddon! 'mid these flowery plains;
The still repose, the liquid lapse serene,
Transferred to bowers imperishably green,
Had beautified Elysium! But the chains
Will soon be broken;-a rough course remains,
Rough as the past; where Thou, of placid mien,
Innocuous as a firstling of the flock,

And countenanced like a soft cerulean sky,
Shalt change thy temper; and with many a shock
Given and received in mutual jeopardy,
Dance, like a Bacchanal, from rock to rock,
Tossing her frantic thyrsus wide and high!

But our readers, whom we have specially invited as guests on this excursion, must not be kept out after dark. We shall have the late hours of the afternoon for a slow drive down to Gorham, and a short call again upon the falls in Berlin on the way. Of course our readers all know that about six in the evening of a midsummer day is the time for a drive. From five to half-past seven is worth all the rest of the day. Nature, as Willis has charmingly said, pours the wine of her beauty twice a day,-in the early morning, and evening, when the long shadows fall. In the mountain region the saying is more strictly true, not only as to shadows, but in regard to colors. Her richest flasks are reserved for the dessert-hour of the day's feast. Then they are bountifully poured.

Then flows amain

The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag,
Hollow and lake, hill-side, and pine arcade,
Are touched with genius.

Yes indeed, it is the wine of beauty that is poured out around the valley now. Who can give the key to that magic of the evening sun by which he sheds over the hills the most various juices of light from his single urn? Those substantial twin majesties, Madison and Adams, have a steady preference for the brown-sherry hues,-though round their bases they are touched with an azure that is held in dark sapphires, but never was caught by any wine. The Androscoggin

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hills take to the lighter and brilliant yellows, the hocks and champagne; the clarets, the Red Hermitage, the purple Burgundies, seem to be monopolized by the ridge of Mount Carter and Mount Moriah.

Would that it could be our fortune to see on the Mount Moriah range, before we reach the hotel, a counterfeit such as we once saw at sunset, of the majesty and splendor of Mont Blanc at evening! The clouds piled themselves over the long range as if they were organized into the mountain, as if they were ridges and pinnacles draped with snow. Back of them lay a sky perfectly clear, but not blue; it was green,-such green as you see in the loop of a billow about to break in foam on a shelving, rocky shore. The west was drenched in peach bloom; and over the whole mass of the towering fleece that mimicked Mont Blanc, was spread a golden flush just ready to flicker into rose-color, that was as glorious as any baptism of splendor upon Chamouni; and which faded away to leave a death pallor as mournful as the upheaved snows of Switzerland can show, after the soul of sunshine has mounted from their crests.

And let us have the privilege of describing what we cannot hope to see again, a spectacle upon one portion of the Mount Moriah. range, which has made one return ride to Gorham, from Berlin Falls, an enduring pleasure. Thus we wrote of it at the time :

"The vapors hung in heavy masses over the principal ridges, but the west was clear. There was evident preparation for a magnificent display,―a great banquet by the sun to the courtier clouds, on retiring from office that day,—a high carnival of light. As I turned the horse towards Gorham, taking the Moriah range full in view, a slight shower began to fall down the valley of Mount Carter, and a patch of rainbow flashed across the bosom of the mountain. From point to point it wandered, uncertain where to locate,' but at last selected a central spot against the lowest summit, and concentrated its splendors.

"The background of the mountain was blue-black. Not a tree was

visible, not an irregularity of the surface. It was one smooth mass of solid darkness, soft as it was deep. And the iris was not a bow, but a pillar of light. It rested on the ground; its top did not quite reach to the summit of the mountain. With what intense delight we looked at it, expecting every instant that its magic texture would dissolve! But it remained and glowed more brightly. I can give you no conception of the brilliancy and delicacy, the splendor and softness, of the vision. The rainbow on a cloud, in the most vivid display I ever saw of it, was pale to this blazing column of untwisted light. The red predominated. Its intensity increased till the mountain shadow behind it was black as midnight. And yet the pillar stood firm. Is not the mountain on fire?' said my companion. Certainly that is flame.' Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, the gorgeous vision staid, and we steadily rode nearer. Really we began to feel uneasy. We expected to see smoke. The color was so intense that there seemed to be real danger of the trees kindling under it. We could not keep in mind that it was celestial fire we were looking at,-fire cool as the water-drops out of which it was born, and on which it reclined. It lay apparently upon the trees, diffused itself among them, from the valley to the crown of the ridge, as gently as the glory in the bush upon Horeb, when the angel of the Lord appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.'

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"It seemed like nothing less than a message to mortals from the internal sphere, the robe of an angel, awful and gentle, come to bear a great truth to the dwellers in the valley. And it was, no doubt. It meant all that the discerning eye and reverent mind felt it to mean. That Arabian bush would have been vital with no such presence, perhaps, to the gaze of a different soul. To him that hath shall be given.' A colder, a skeptical spirit would have said, possibly, 'there is a curious play of the sunbeams in the mist about that shrub,' or, it may be, would have decided that he was the victim of an optical illusion, and so would have missed the message to put the

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