By him that utters it, exclaim aloud, By the Glen route we cross no subordinate peaks, and do not follow a ridge line from which we see summits towering here and there, but steadily ascend Mount Washington itself. In this way a more adequate conception is gained of its immense mass and majestic architecture. After we pass above the line of the carriage road to the barren portion of the mountain, there are grand pictures at the south and east of the Androscoggin Valley, and the long, heavily wooded Carter range. Indeed, nothing which the day can show will give more astonishment than the spectacle which opens after passing through the spectral forest, made up of acres of trees, leafless, peeled, and bleached, and riding out upon the ledge. Those who make thus their first acquaintance with a mountain height will feel, in looking down into the immense hollow in which the Glen House is a dot, and off upon the vast green breastwork of Mount Carter, that language must be stretched and intensified to answer for the new sensations awakened. Splendid, glorious, amazing, sublime, with liberal supplies of interjections, are the words that usually gush to the lips; but seldom is an adjective or exclamation uttered that interprets the scene, or coins the excitement and surge of feeling. We shall never forget the phrase which a friend once used,-an artist in expression as in feeling, and not given under strong stimulant to superlatives,— as he looked, for the first time, from the ledge upon the square miles of undulating wilderness, "See the tumultuous bombast of the landscape!" Yet the glory of the view is, after all, the four highest companion mountains of the range, Clay, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, that show themselves in a bending line beyond the tremendous gorge at the right of the path, absurdly called the "Gulf of Mexico," and are visible from their roots to their summits. These mountains are not seen on the ascent from the Notch, being hidden by the dome of Mount Washington itself. On the Glen path these grand forms tower so near us that it seems at first as though a strong arm might throw a stone across the Gulf and hit them. There should be a resting-place near the edge of the ravine, where parties could dismount and study these forms at leisure. Except by climbing to the ridge through the unbroken wilderness of the northern side, there is no such view to be had east of the Mississippi of mountain architecture and sublimity. They do not seem to be rocky institutions. Their lines have so much life that they appear to have just leaped from the deeps beneath the soil. We say to ourselves, these peaks are nature's struggle against petrifaction, the earth's cry for air. If the day is not entirely clear, if great white clouds Are wandering in thick flocks among the mountains, the shadows that leisurely trail along the sides of these Titans, or waver down their slopes, extinguishing their color, as it blots the dim green of their peaks, then their tawny shoulders, then the purple and gray of their bare ledges, and at last dulls the verdure of their lower forests, thus playing in perpetual frolic with the light,—are more fascinating than anything which can be seen from the summit of Mount Washington itself, on the landscape below. But let us not begin by disparaging at all what is to be seen on the summit. Suppose that we could be lifted suddenly a mile and a quarter above the sea level in the air, and could be sustained there without exertion. That is the privilege we have in standing on the summit of Mount Washington, about sixty-three hundred feet above the ocean. Only the view is vastly more splendid than any that could be presented to us if we could hang poised on wings at the same elevation above a level country, or should see nothing beneath us but the wrinkled sea." For we are not only upheld at such a height, but we stand in close fellowship with the noblest forms which the substance of the world has assumed under our northern skies. We estimate our height from the ocean level, and it is on a wave that we are lifted,—a tremendous ground-swell fifteen miles long, which stiffened before it could subside, or fling its boiling mass upon the bubbling plain. We are perched on the tip of a jet in the centre of it, tossed up five hundred feet higher than any other spout from its tremendous surge, and which was arrested and is now fixed forever as a witness of the passions that have heaved more furiously in the earth's bosom than any which the sea has felt, and as a "tower of observance" for sweeping with the eye the beauty that overlays the globe. It may be that this billow of land was cooled by the sea when it first arose, and that these highest peaks around us were the first portions of New England that saw the light. On a clear morning or evening the silvery gleam of the Atlantic is seen on the southeastern horizon. The waves, that form only a transitory flash in the landscape which the mountain shows its guests, once broke in foam over the rocks that now are beaten only by the winds which the Atlantic conjures, and covered by the snows that mimic the whiteness of the Atlantic surf, out of which their substance may have been drawn. And, since the retreat of the sea, what forces have been patiently at work to cover the stalwart monarchs near us with the beauty which they reveal! We call them barren, but there is a richer display of the creative power and art on Mount Adams yonder than on any number of square miles in the lowlands of New England equal to the whole surface of that mountain. The noblest trees of New England are around its base, and there are firs on the ledge from which its peak springs that are not more than two inches high. Alpine and Lapland plants grow in the crevices of its rocks, and adorn the edges of its ravines. Since the sea-wave washed its cone, the light and the frosts have been gnawing the shingly schist, to give room and sustenance for the lichens that have tinted every foot of its loosely-shingled slopes with stains whose origin is more mysterious than any colors which a painter combines, as mysterious as the painter's genius itself. The storms of untold thousands of years have chiselled lines of expression in the mountain, whose grace and charm no landscape gardening on a lowland can rival; and the bloom of the richest conservatory would look feeble in contrast with the hues that often in morning and evening, or in the pomp of autumn and the winter desolation, have glowed upon it, as though the whole art of God was concentrated in making it outblush the rose, or dim the sapphire with its flame. The first effect of standing on the summit of Mount Washington is a bewildering of the senses at the extent and lawlessness of the spectacle. It is as though we were looking upon a chaos. The land is tossed into a tempest. But in a few moments we become accustomed to this, and begin to feel the joy of turning round and sweeping a horizon line that in parts is drawn outside of New England. Then we can begin to inquire into the particulars of the stupendous diorama. Northward, if the air is not thick with haze, we look beyond the Canada line. Southward, the "parded land" stretches across the borders of Massachusetts, before it melts into the horizon. Do you see a dim blue pyramid on the far northeast, looking scarcely more substantial than gossamer, but keeping its place stubbornly, and cutting the yellowish horizon with the hue of Damascus steel? It is Katahdin looming out of the central wilderness of Maine. Almost in the same line on the southwest, and nearly as far away, do you see another filmy angle in the base of the sky? It is Monadnoc, which would feel prouder than Mont Blanc, or the frost-sheeted Chimborazo, or the topmost spire of the Himalaya, if it could know that the genius of Mr. Emerson has made it the noblest mountain in literature. The nearer range of the Green Mountains are plainly visible; and behind them Camel's Hump and Mansfield tower in the direction of Lake Champlain. The silvery patch on the north, that looks at first like a small pond, is Umbagog; a little farther away due south a section of the mirror of Winnipiseogee glistens. Sebago flashes on the southeast, and a little nearer, the twin Lovell lakes, that lie more prominently on the map of our history than on the landscape. Next, the monotony of the scene is broken by observing the various forms of the mountains that are thick as "meadow-mole hills," the great wedge of Lafayette, the long, thin ridge of Carter, the broad-based and solid Pleasant Mountain, the serrated summit of Chocorua, the beautiful cone of Kiarsarge, the cream-colored Stratford peaks, as near alike in size and shape as two Dromios. Then the pathways of the rivers interest us. The line of the Connecticut we can follow from its birth near Canada to the point where it is hidden by the great Franconia wall. Its water is not visible, but often in the morning a line of fog lies for miles over the lower land, counterfeiting the serpentine path of its blue water that bounds |