Bethel and Gorham, and more fascinating than any piece of river scenery it has ever been our fortune to look upon in the mountain region. The rock and cascade pictures in the forests of Baldcap,

well reward the rambles of an hour or two. Boarders for the summer, at moderate price, have been taken at Mr. Gates's, and we do not know of any farm-house where the view from the door offers so many elements of a landscape that can never tire.

THE LEAD-MINE BRIDGE

is reached by driving two miles in the direction of Gorham. The mine itself from which the bridge is named is about a mile distant, in a ravine of mica-slate rocks. Although the ore is quite plentiful, and contains three pounds of silver to the ton, it seems that it cannot be profitably wrought, and it is abandoned now. But in the afternoon of a sunny day, when the mountain summits are not covered, every ravine on the distant sides of Madison and Washington is a quarry of beauty. The whole substance of these mountains seems then to be literally precious stones. They stand out in the same shape as when seen from the Gates cottage two miles back. We do not have so much of the river and meadows in view as from the high bank there; but we are close to the stream on the bridge; we see it before us breaking around several charming islands, and then flowing with deep and melodious gurgle into one tide again, which hurries down towards Gilead.

This is one of the favorite excursions from Gorham. The bridge is only four miles distant from the hotel, and the drive is easily made in three quarters of an hour. The best time to make the visit is between five and seven of the afternoon. Then the lights are softest, and the shadows richest on the foliage of the islands of the river, and on the lower mountain sides. And then the gigantic gray pyramid of Madison with its pointed apex, back of which peers the ragged crest of Adams, shows to the best advantage. It fills up the whole distance of the scene. The view is one of uncommon simplicity and symmetry. The rolling slopes upon the base of Mount Moriah on one side, and the jutting spurs of Mounts Hayes and Baldcap on the other, compose an effective avenue through which the eye roams upward to the higher mountain that sits back as on a throne. Our readers will remember that a sketch of it is given in the introductory chapter, on the ninth page. But if the sketch were thrice as good,

it could not give adequate suggestion of a view which at once takes the eye captive, and not only claims front rank among the richest landscapes that are combined in New Hampshire out of the White Mountains and the streams they feed, but impresses travellers that are fresh from Europe as one of the loveliest pictures which have been shown to them on the earth. For the artist's purpose, the middle distance is not sufficiently effective, and the river is nowhere quiet enough to balance the ripples and broken lights of the foreground; but for eye-landscape, to be enjoyed without reference to the demands of the canvas, it would be difficult to conceive a scene where greater beauty of river and islands is crowned with a mountain so bold and yet so tenderly tinted, so symmetrical and still so masculine, so satisfactory in height without losing on the surface clearness and vigor of detail.

Ah, what charming effects have we not seen on Mount Madison from this bridge, conjured by the clouds and sun! The gold on the sharp apex of its pyramid in the early morning; the ever-shifting perplexity of lights and gloom investing it in a sultry noon when thunder-clouds sail over it; and at sunset once or twice in dogdays, volcano-pictures, when piles of vapor that towered over it and buried the summit were lurid around the lower edges, and seemed to burst from a fiery heart within, as the sides of the mountain were kindled almost to a ruby hue by the last beams of day! It is not a single mountain, but a gallery of pictures, that Madison stands for in our memory. See it in a clear and tender afternoon, and how delicately every lower ridge in its foreground is hinted by the western light, that reveals no shrub, no forest, no precipice, but only symmetry and softness, and a proud height in perfect proportion with its mass and slope, piercing an azure heaven with a double peak of tender brown! We may measure its altitude now in feet by our angles, and find that its summit is nearly a mile from the level where we stand; we may exhaust what science can tell of its substance and strata; but all the truths of its structure are nothing to the expression it wears in this favorable air. As it sits enthroned thus over

the stream and farms whose green and silver wind up to its base, can it be the mountain which looks so desolate in the ride to the Glen, that is pathless and savage to the feet of the climber, that stands out so ugly in the forenoon light, which, lying stern upon it, makes its harsh crest look covered with soiled sole-leather? Now, as we gaze upon it, we see what it was really made for. Although it wears no it recalls Tennyson's lines:

How faintly flushed, how phantom fair
Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys
And snowy dells in the golden air.

Its divine gala-dress is upon it. Its desolate rocks have ripened. Art has flowered out of the bitter geological stem. Its strata and truth, and all its endowments for use, are merely the rough touches of the brush, intended to be viewed, not near the canvas, but a few miles distant, that they may be smoothed and shaded into unspeakable beauty. And the colors, too! What nettings of pale gold upon the sloping edges of its lesser peaks of azure, when the late afternoon light glances down its eastern side! Or, if a large mass of cloud has covered it in deep blue shade, and the sun finding a small opening, pours through a widening cone of rays, how will the lower towers and domes of the mountain temple blaze out in splendid radiance, like gilded roofs with gemmy walls! It is as if the sun had said,

O thou afflicted, beaten with the storm!

Behold I lay thy stones in cement of vermilion,

And thy foundations with sapphires.

And I will make thy battlements of rubies,

And thy gates of carbuncles,

And all thy borders full of precious stones!

One spectacle which it was our fortune to witness from the Bridge repeats itself more frequently than any other before our eyes:-a sudden shower driving down the valley, completely hiding the mountain with gusts of rain,-the gradual thinning of the wet veil, till the

outline of the beautiful pyramid of Madison is seen dim and lofty on its pedestal,—the soft blue sky of evening revealed again through the cloudy west behind it, and when the rain entirely ceased, the rising of most delicate mists from the surface of the mountain, to be smitten by the sun, which breaks through a cloud-rift, so that they hang over the broad pile as a veil of silver gossamer, say rather, a texture of light itself-light condensed into a gleaming web, almost too bright for a steady gaze! The mountain seemed transfigured. It was not so much swathed with splendor, as translucent. One might have thought he was looking through some rent in the curtain of matter, upon a celestial hill, sacred as Tabor once was, with " garments white and glistening."

Yet we ought not to be so engrossed with the distant magnificence as to overlook the beauty of the ledge in front of the Lead-Mine Bridge, around which the river sweeps with strong and melodious swirl. If we will sit down upon it and study it carefully for a few minutes, our eyes may be opened to the beauty of rock scenery in many a mountain walk or climb, especially if we let light fall upon it from this passage of Ruskin: "When a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather, Nature finishes it in her own way; first, she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all probability, are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. Man comes and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his ignorance he calls a rough stone.' He proceeds to finish it in his fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and, finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful. And the block, thus disfigured, he calls finished,' and proceeds to build therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent ani