long waiting; Boston would have lost a man of genius; and the region of unembodied and ideal beauty would have gained a true seer before the time.) He insisted that, after such an effect,' we must of necessity go on a descending grade of scenery the rest of the day. "An hour's easy climbing took us to a point, above the high trees and seemingly about midway in the gorge, from which perhaps the most impressive view of the ravine is gained. Looking off and down, its sides sloped sharply to the very road in the village of Randolph. Looking back and up, its wings, fifteen hundred feet over our heads, and in places nearly perpendicular, bent and joined in a wall of bare, jagged, and threatening ledge, just under the head of the mountain, which it completely shut out from view. We were in the region of silence. There was no scream, or song, or chipper of any bird,—no buzz of any insect. We were shielded by the right-hand wall from the westerly breeze which was driving the scud over the line of the mountain peaks; and there were no leaves around us to stir and rustle at the fanning of the air. The brook had dwindled. We no longer had its path to follow. Now and then, under the large rocks, we could just hear a slight gurgle, where out of sight it was giving in baby prattle an intimation of its existence. On the steep cliffs, we could see, here and there, the motionless glass of a cascade, but it gave no sound. The only note of animal life we heard, all day, was the sharp chirrup of the chipmunk, not long after we left the camp. Our talk was, no doubt, the first sound of human voices that had ever broken that solemn stillness. The ravine lacks the great attraction of a snow-arch,' and does not show so symmetrical a wall as the majestic Colosseum-curve, out of which, in Tuckerman's Ravine, the 'thousand streams' seem to ooze. But it is grander than Tuckerman's in its cliffs; and far more impressive, seen midway, for what one of our party called its deep downity,'-the sweep of its keenedged walls from the very shoulders of the mountain to its feet by the Randolph road.

"From the point I have thus been speaking of, just above the line of high trees, it seemed as though we could reach the summit of the

ridge to two hours. But here we found the greatest difficulty of the whole excursion. The slope was not very steep; for a mile or more, the bottom of the ravine was rather a gradually retreating stairway of

enormous

boulders; and, as an Irishman remarked

in ascending the cone of Mount Washing

The huge rocks were piled in the most eccentric confusion; crevasses, sometimes twenty and thirty feet deep and spanned with moss, lay in wait for the feet; thickets of scrub spruces and junipers overgrew these boulders, and made the most sinewy opposition to our passage. Every muscle of our bodies was called into play in fighting these dwarfed and knotty regiments of evergreens.

A more thorough gymnasium for training and testing the working and enduring powers of the system, could not be arranged by art. After six hours of steady and hard climbing,-which, added to the

three of the afternoon previous, made nine hours of toil in scaling the ridge, we gained the plateau above which the pinnacle of Ad ams soars. The last part of our path out lay up the eastern wall, just where it joins the left-hand cliffs; and here we had the excitement of grand rock scenery overhanging and threatening us as we climbed; while the opposite rampart, covered with green, and chan

nelled by streams into very graceful lines, responded to the blasted cliffs like Gerizim to Ebal,-the hill of blessing to the mount of cursing. One could not turn the eye from side to side, without repeating mentally the passage, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.' "The last few rods of the passage out of the ravine led us up a narrow and smooth gateway, quite steep, and carpeted with grass. We sat

6

some time in it, looking at the rocky desolation and horror just about us, balanced by the lovely lines into which the verdure of the western ramparts was broken,-not knowing what a splendid view was in reserve for us when we should step out upon the ridge. The huge cone of Mount Madison rose before us, steep, symmetrical, and sharp, with more commanding beauty of form than any other summit of the White Hills has ever shown to my eye. We were facing the southeast when we rose out of the ravine, and were so nearly under the crest of Adams that its shape was hidden from us, and also every other summit of the range. So that there was nothing to compete with the proud proportions of the pinnacle before us.

"There are very few peaked summits in the region of the White Hills. It is even said by accurate observers, that among the Alps there are not more than five that slope steeply on all sides from pointed tops. The sharpest apex is generally supported on one side by a long line with very moderate inclination. This is the case with the spires of Jefferson and Adams, seen from the upper portion of the bridleroad on Mount Washington. Nature in the mountain-lines, as in her other departments, loves to hide her strength, refrains from startling emphasis, and veils the intensity of her forces from the senses by breadth and mass in the products, which appeal to thought and imaginative insight for recognition. The sharp drawing of mountains with very narrow bases, which we often see in pictures, is due to the fact that the artist is incompetent to suggest great height by the moderate lines that inclose vast bulk, and it is weak as caricature is feeble in contrast with portraiture, or as declamation is weak compared with the eloquence of original and practical speech. But the cone of Madison, seen from the gateway of the ravine, is not only steep, regular, and pointed, but, all other mountains being shut out, it looks immensely massive. The whole mountain has seldom looked so high from below as this bare fraction of it did, which we were gazing at from an elevation of four thousand feet on its sides. And its color was even more fascinating than its form. It puzzled us to understand how the rounding lines of the summit, as seen from the road in

Randolph, could have been conjured into the lance-like sharpness here revealed to us. And how the light gray which it wears to a beholder in Jefferson, or the leathery brown it presents from the Glen, or the gray green which is its real tint when we go close to its rocks, could have transformed itself into the leaden lava hue in which it rose before us, was a stranger mystery. I feel sure that it was some trick of the light, like many of the sunset tints, and not the

color which the cone steadily presents. The effect was the more grand because it seemed as though nothing but batteries could have produced it. The peak looked like some proud fortification that had been stormed at with leaden shot by a park of artillery for years. Our artist was grieved that we had not more time to allow him in sketching the view.

"We all looked with longing eyes to the summit, which seemed to invite us to scale it; but the sun was already past noon, and we must reach the house on Mount Washington by dark. So we resolved to