off enough water to the right side of its path to slip and trickle over the lovely, dark green mosses that cling to the gray and purple rocks. For how many thousand years has it enlivened the mountain side thus with its flashes and its dance? Perhaps long enough to have

fulfilled one of the great Platonic years,-long enough for the very

water which in one summer week has poured down its channels, to be returned from the sea by the clouds, to the very same spot over the mountain ridge, and to repeat their journey.

But there is no suggestion of age in its curves and color, or in the sprightliness of its voice. Beautiful plunderer, it has made the mountain more meagre, and has torn out thousands of tons from his bulk, to find a more easy pathway down which it might move. But it is not only undimmed youth, it is feminine grace and freshness and charm which it expresses,

Laugh of the mountain! lyre of bird and tree'
Pomp of the meadow! mirror of the morn!
The soul of April, unto whom are born
The rose and jassamine, leaps wild in thee!

The mountain has yielded without murmur to the humors of the stream in choosing and channelling its path. The scene is the story told in a mightier sculpture than art can manage, of Ariadne riding the panther,―beauty resting gracefully on the submissive brute. And yet, when we forecast the service of these beautiful crystal sheets, born in part of snows packed in the shadowed caverns above, in carrying coolness to the Saco and North Conway, let it remind us of Longfellow's verses :

God sent his messenger the rain,
And said unto the mountain brook,
"Rise up and from thy caverns look

And leap, with naked, snow-white feet,
From the cool hills into the heat

Of the broad, arid plain."

God sent his messenger of faith,

And whispered in the maiden's heart,

"Rise up and look from where thou art

And scatter with unselfish hands

Thy freshness on the barren sands

And solitudes of Death."

The surroundings of

THE GLEN ELLIS FALL

are more grand than those of the cascade just spoken of. In fact, if we wished to take a person into a scene that would seem to be the

very heart of mountain wildness, without wishing to make him climb into any of the ravines, we should invite him to visit this fall of the Ellis River. The best view of the fall is obtained by leaning against a tree that overhangs a sheer precipice, and looking down upon the slide and foam of the narrow and concentrated cataract to where it

splashes into the dark green pool, a hundred feet below. And then as we look off from this point above the fall, we see the steep side of Mount Carter crowded to the ridge with the forest. It is not the sense of age, but of grim, almost fierce wildness, that is breathed from the scenery, amid which this cataract takes a leap of eighty

feet to carry its contribution to the Saco. But we must be careful how we talk of the leap of the river, or we shall have Mr. Ruskin after us. He tells us that artists seldom convey the characteristic of a powerful stream that descends a long distance through a narrow channel, where it has a chance to expand as it falls. The springing lines of parabolic descent are apt to be the controlling feature of the picture. The stream is made to look active all the way, not supine. "Now water will leap a little way, it will leap down a weir or over a stone, but it tumbles over a high fall like this; and it is when we have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary,—when we have lost the spring of the fall, and arrived at the plunge of it, that we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. Where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom."

It is feminine and maidenly grace that is illustrated by the crystal cascade; it is masculine youth, the spirit of heroic adventure, that is suggested by this stream, which flows for a long way level over a rocky bed before it breaks from its mountain-prison into a broader life.

Take, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take
This parting glance, no negligent adieu!
A Protean change seems wrought while I pursue
The curves, a loosely scattered chain doth make;
Or rather thou appear'st a glittering snake,
Silent, and to the gazer's eye untrue,
Thridding with sinuous lapse the rushes, through
Dwarf willows gliding, and by ferny brake.

Starts from a dizzy steep the undaunted Rill
Robed instantly in garb of snow-white foam;

And laughing dares the Adventurer, who hath clomb

So high, a rival purpose to fulfil;

Else let the dastard backward wend, and roam,

Seeking less bold achievement, where he will!

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON.