"In those happy spots of nature where land and water, above and below, combine their charms, it is hard to tell whether the stony upland height, or the liquid deep beneath, most lures the sight. I believe it was Goethe who first said that lakes are the eyes of the landscape; and if there be reason for such a figure, it is not strange such features in the countenance of the world should fix our regard. Certainly they add to that countenance the same sort of brightness and animation which the organs of vision give to the human face; and as our glance, perusing the living traits of a man, is never satisfied till it reaches his eye, so on the earth, we seek after water, and are not quite content till our attention, long vagrant, rests upon it.” SUMMER BY THE LAKE-SIDE. NOON. WHITE clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep. Light mists, whose soft embraces keep The sunshine on the hills asleep! O, isles of calm!-0, dark, still wood! Your rest with deeper quietude! O, shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through Yon mountain gaps, my longing view To stiller sea and greener land, And softer lights and airs more bland, Transfused through you, O mountain friends' I read each misty mountain sign, Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, Of Nature's own exceeding peace. O, welcome calm of heart and mind! So fall the weary years away; This western wind hath Lethean powers, LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE. Does this word mean "The Smile of the Great Spirit," or "Pleasant Water in a High Place?" There has been a dispute, we believe, among the learned in Indian lore, as to the true rendering. Whatever the word means, the lake itself signifies both. Topographically, under the surveyor's eye and the mill-owners' estimates, it is pleasant water in a high place; about thirty miles long, and varying from one to seven miles in breadth; with railroad stations on its shores at Alton Bay and Weir's; and a little more than a hundred miles distant from Boston. To the poet whose exquisite verses we have chosen as a prelude to this chapter, and to all who have an eye anointed like his, it is the smile of the Great Spirit. It is easy to give a general description of the character of the shores of Winnipiseogee, to count its islands, and to enumerate the mountain ranges and peaks, with their names and height, that surround it. But it is not so easy to convey any impression, by words, of the peculiar loveliness that invests it, and which lifts it above the rank of a prosaic reservoir in Belknap and Carrol counties in New Hampshire, about five hundred feet above the sea, into an expression of the Divine art renewed every summer by the Creator. There is very little cultivation around the borders of Winnipiseogee. The surroundings are scarcely less wild than they were, when, in 1652, Captains Edward Johnson and Simon Willard carved their initials, which are still visible, on the "Endicott Rock," near its outlet. The straggling parties of Indians who pass by it now, on their way to trade with the visitors at the Flume House in Franconia, see it but little more civilized in expression than their forefathers did, whose wigwams, before Massachusetts felt the white man's foot, spotted the meadows of the Merrimac below. Where the old smoked in silence their pipes, and the young And yet it is not a sense of seclusion amid the forests, of being shut in by untamed hills amid the heart of the wilderness, that Winnipiseogee inspires. Indeed, the lake is not shut in by any abrupt mountain walls. Its islands and shores fringe the water with winding lines and long, low, narrow capes of green. But the mountains retreat gradually back from them, with large spaces of cheerful light, or vistas of more gently sloping land, between. The whole impression is not of wild, but of cheerful and symmetrical beauty. Artists generally, we believe, find better studies on Lake George. It may be that there is more of manageable picturesqueness in the combination of its coves and cliffs; but we think that, for larger proportioned landscape-to be enjoyed by the eye, if it cannot be easily handled by the pencil or brush-Winnipiseogee is immeasurably superior. We cannot imagine a person tiring, through a whole summer, of its artistic and infinite variety. While it could hardly be that the eye, in the daily and familiar acquaintance of a whole season with Lake George, would not feel the need of wider reaches in the mountain views, richer combinations of the forest wildness with retreating slopes and cones bathed in "the tenderest purple of distance," and with glimpses, now and then, such as the New Hampshire lake furnishes, of sovereign summits that heave upon the horizon their vague, firm films. Mr. Everett said, a few years since, in a speech, that Switzerland has no lovelier view for the tourist than the lake we are speaking of affords. And Rev. Mr. Bartol, of Boston, in his charming volume, "Pictures of Europe," tells us: "There may be lakes in Tyrol and Switzerland, which, in particular respects, exceed the charms of any in the Western world. But in that wedding of the land with the water, in which one is perpetually approaching and retreating from the other, and each transforms itself into a thousand figures for an endless dance of grace and beauty, till a countless multitude of shapes are arranged into perfect ease and freedom, of almost musical motion, nothing can be beheld to surpass, if to match, our Winnipiscogee." It is, of course, in moving over the lake, on a steamer or in a boat, that this "musical motion" of the shores is caught. We will abide the judgment of any tourist as to the extravagance of this quotation, if he has an eye competent to look through the land to landscape, and becomes acquainted with the lake from the deck of a steamer, on an auspicious summer day. The sky is clear; there are just clouds enough to relieve the soft blue and fleck the sentinel hills with shadow; and over the wide panorama of distant mountains, a warm, dreamy haze settles, tinging them, as Emerson says the south wind, in May-days, Tints the human countenance Perhaps there is at first a faint breeze, just enough to fret the water, and roughen or mezzotint the reflections of the shores. But as we shoot out into the breadth of the lake, and take in the wide scene, there is no ripple on its bosom. The little islands float over liquid silver, and glide by each other silently, as in the movements of a dance, while our boat changes her heading. And all around, the mountains, swelling softly, or cutting the sky with jagged lines of steely blue, vie with the molten mirror at our feet for the privilege of holding the eye. The "sun-sparks" blaze thick as stars upon the glassy wrinkles of the water. Leaning over the side of the steamer, gazing at the exquisite curves of the water just outside the foamy splash of the wheels, watching the countless threads of silver that stream out from the shadow of the wheel-house, seeing the steady |