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leaf the whole character of the tree. A recent writer on botany maintains that a leaf with a leaf-stalk implies that the tree to which it belongs has naturally a bare trunk for a certain distance; but that a leaf without a leaf-stalk shows that its parent tree is naturally branched from the ground. Also that there is a correspondence between the disposition and distribution of the leaf-veins and the disposition and distribution of the branches of the trees. Still further, that the angle at which the lateral veins in the leaf go off shows the angle at which the branch goes off, and that the curve of the vein shows the curve of the corresponding branch. Mr. Ruskin tells us that "the numbers of any great composition, arranged about a centre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best cathedral entrances having five porches corresponding in proportional purpose to its five lobes; while the loveliest groups of lines attainable in any pictorial composition are always based on the section of the leaf-bud, or on the relation of its ribs to the convex curve inclosing them." And in a grander architecture than any human one, the laws of the arrangement of leaves around their stem are repeated. For it is found that the relations between the times of the revolutions of the planets in the solar system around the sun, are expressed by the same series of fractions which show the combinations most frequently observed in the arrangement of leaves, in spirals around their stems. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf.'

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And those five huge mountains, that face us as we rise out of the woods of Mount Carter into a little clearing-Washington, Clay, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, which seem to tower far more grandly when seen from this height than from the plateau in the Glen-are not the lines of the leaf shown to us in the veins of their ravines, and in the curves that bound many of their spires of rock, or that show the grace into which their landslides have subsided? Only we must remember that these five huge lobes of earth, seen at the proper distance, are petals rather, of a mighty flower, whose bloom is not fixed for certain seasons, but flushes and fades by incalculable laws. And it is not fixed hues, such as a rose or a dahlia or a tulip bears, that this corolla of

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earth is appointed to display; but every tender dye, which the sun's pencil leaves upon the Flora of New England, glows upon them at morning or at sunset, and their bloom is the richest when the vital forces of the garden and the forest are checked by the winter frosts and buried in the snow.

We shall have a very grand view of Mount Washington on the way from the Glen House to visit the two cascades, a few miles dis

tant in Pinkham Pass. In the Autumn of 1858, a clearing was made about three miles from the Glen, which opens the nearest view of the whole summit and shoulders of Mount Washington, which can ever probably be obtained from the base. It is near a small fountain whose water flows two ways-from one side into a branch of the Saco, from the other into a branch of the Androscoggin, that we gain the view of the deep hollows and rocky ruins over which the dome of the great mountain is so serenely set. On one of those hard ridges, four thousand feet above us, three drops of rain may fall in company, one of which may trickle off towards the Ammonoosuc, to be borne into the Connecticut; while the other two, sinking into the invisible veins that feed this fountain, and bubbling up into it, may part company again,-on one side for the Peabody River, on the other for the Ellis, and thus be received into the sea at different openings on the coast of Maine. Is not this a hieroglyphic lesson in the great spiritual laws?

So from the heights of Will

Life's parting stream descends,

And as a moment turns its slender rill,

Each widening torrent bends,

From the same cradle's side,

From the same mother's knee,

One to long darkness and the frozen tide,

One to the peaceful sea!

The waterfalls we are to seek are not at a great distance from the road, as many of the others are, which we have described; and on our way to the

CRYSTAL CASCADE,

let us bear in mind that "of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into

symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the form of the torrent,-in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul."

We never look at the Crystal Cascade without revering and rejoicing over the poetry with which Nature invests the birth of so common a thing as water. The making of the most costly wine, after the sun has ceased to tinge the grape with purple, and to infuse sweetness into its pulp, has no such poetic charm connected with it as encircles the advent of pure water. The gentle and invisible suction of it in vapor fresh from the salt fountains of the sea; its dropping in crystal snow piled in fantastic drifts and pinnacles upon the lofty mountain ridges, to melt there under the climbing summer sun; its descent in showers, or in tempests driven by howling winds and flashing electric fire; and then the passages of its earthly history,—its trickling from the hard rocks of lofty summits, flavored with the cold pure breath of mountain winds, its leaping in rills, and their marriage into brooks, its plunging in cascades, that laugh joyously through sloping forests, its calmer flow through green nooks and over mossy rocks, its soft "complaining" creep, "making the meadows green," while it bears its burden to a river's treasury, or its untiring bubble from the ground in springs,-what process of nature has so much to stimulate and engage the imagination as the biography of water, from its birth out of the ocean to its presence on our summer tables to assuage our thirst! If wine were our ordinary drink, and water were as rare and expensive as our richest wine, and there were

only one elevation on the globe,-some ice-coned Chimborazo, some jagged Jungfrau,-where it was collected, condensed, and distributed in streams, what gorgeous poetry would be dedicated to the rare and gracious fluid, what eagerness to get draughts of it, what sums would be paid for transparent ice-blocks of it, what enthusiastic pilgrimages be made to the majestic crystal distillery piercing the heavens, whence the cloud-vapor was given in trickling beauty and melody to man! Yet every mountain is such a distillery, and the rocky bed of every leaping rivulet the vein of such a mysterious and poetic mercy to the world. We lack the insight to connect the processes and weave the history of the gift into marvel and beauty.

It requires about half an hour to reach the Crystal Cascade, with a party of ladies, from the side of the road where the wagon is left. And visitors should not forget that the proper point from which to see it is not the foot of the fall itself, but the top of the little cliff directly opposite. No contrast more striking can be found among the mountains than that of age and youth, which is furnished from that point. The cliff is richly carpeted with mosses that have been nourished and thickened by centuries, and that never till within ten years have yielded to any pressure more rude than the step of a partridge, or the footfall of a fawn. The rocks of the neighboring precipices look old. They are cracked and seamed as though the forces of decay had wound their coils fairly around them, and were crumbling them at leisure. The lichens upon them look bleached and feeble. These protruding portions of its anatomy indicate that Mount Washington has passed the meridian of his years. But the waterfall gives the impression of graceful and perpetual youth. Down it comes, leaping, sliding, tripping, widening its pure tide, and then gathering its thin sheet to gush through a narrowing pass in the rocks,—all the way thus, from under the sheer walls of Tuckerman's Ravine, some miles above, till it reaches the curve opposite the point where we stand, and winding around it, sweeps down the bending stairway, shattering its substance into exquisite crystal, but sending

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