Its pale and azure-pencilled flower
Should canopy Titania's bower.

But what a rare joy when, in some warm summer evening, we can sail on the lake while the moon is full in a double sense, and seems to pour out in larger liberality than usual from its fountains! Its beams do not rain in silver streams, but gush, as it were, from all the veins of the air. Every globule of the atmosphere exudes unctuous light. And its color is so charming-a delicate luminous cream! One can hardly help believing that Gunstock and Ossipee enjoy their anointing, after the withering heat of the day, with such cool and tender lustre. And how still the lake lies, to have its surface burnished by it into liquid acres of a faint golden splendor!

From Centre Harbor, at the upper end of the Lake, the drives are very attractive. The guide-books report them in detail. We have room to call attention only to the excursion which is most interesting, that is, to the summit of "Red Hill," which rises about five miles away, and stands about two thousand feet above the sea. Near the top of the mountain, where its ledges of sienite are exposed to the action of the air, they have a reddish hue. But it owes its name, we believe, to the fact that it is covered with the uva ursa, the leaves of which change to a brilliant red in autumn. The excursion is easily made in the afternoon, or between breakfast and dinner. Its unwooded peak is lifted to the height from which scenery looks most charming. And there is no point except this, along the regular mountain route, beneath which a large lake is spread. But here Winnipiseogee stretches from its very foot, and its whole length is seen as far as the softly swelling hills that bound it on the southeast. There is only one point from which the view of it is more attractive, -that is from the highest of the Belknap mountains, which stand, not at one end of the lake like Red Hill, but midway of its length. Mount Belknap is visited from Laconia, and very few have seen from its summit the lovely mirror in which its own feminine form, and its smaller sister hill, are repeated. But whoever misses the view from

Red Hill, loses the most fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable view, from a moderate mountain height, that can be gained from any eminence that lies near the tourist's path. The Mount Washington range is not visible, being barred from sight by the dark Sandwich

chain, which in the afternoon, untouched by the light, wears a savage frown that contrasts most effectively with the placid beauty of the Lake below. Here is the place to study its borders, to admire the fleet of islands that ride at anchor on its bosom-from little shallops to grand three-deckers-and to enjoy the exquisite lines by which its bays are enfolded, in which its coves retreat, and with which its low capes cut the azure water, and hang over it an emerald fringe. And

if one can stay there late in the afternoon, as we have stayed, and see the shadows thrown out from the island and trees, and the hues that flush the Lake's surface as the sun declines, he will be prepared to enjoy more thoroughly the description of such an hour and such a view, with which Percival has enriched American literature.

Thou wert calm,

Even as an infant calm, that gentle evening;
And one could hardly dream thou'dst ever met
And wrestled with the storm. A breath of air,
Felt only in its coolness, from the west
Stole over thee, and stirred thy golden mirror
Into long waves, that only showed themselves
In ripples on thy shore,-far distant ripples,
Breaking the silence with their quiet kisses,
And softly murmuring peace.

Far to the south

Thy slumbering waters floated, one long sheet
Of burnished gold,-between thy nearer shores
Softly embraced, and melting distantly
Into a yellow haze, embosomed low
'Mid shadowy hills and misty mountains, all
Covered with showery light, as with a veil
Of airy gauze. Beautiful were thy shores,
And manifold their outlines, here up-swelling
In bossy green,-there hung in slaty cliffs,
Black as if hewn from jet, and overtopped
With the dark cedar's tufts, or new-leaved birch,
Bright as the wave below. How glassy clear
The far expanse! Beneath it all the sky
Swelled downward, and its fleecy clouds were gay
With all their rainbow fringes, and the trees
And cliffs and grassy knolls were all repeated
Along the uncertain shores,-so clearly seen
Beneath the invisible transparency,

That land and water mingled, and the one
Seemed melting in the other. O, how soft
Yon mountain's heavenly blue, and all o'erlaid
With a pale tint of roses! Deep between

The ever-narrowing lake, just faintly marked

By its reflected light, and further on

Buried in vapory foam, as if a surf

Heaved on its utmost shore. How deep the silence!

Only the rustling boughs, the broken ripple,

The cricket and the tree-frog, with the tinkle

Of bells in fold and pasture, or a voice
Heard from a distant farm, or hollow bay
Of home-returning hound,-a virgin land
Just rescued from the wilderness, still showing
Wrecks of the giant forest.

I gazed upon them,

And on the unchanging lake, and felt awhile
Unutterable joy,-I loved my land

With more than filial love,-it was a joy
That only spake in tears.

But the beauty of the lake cannot be judged from a point so high as Red Hill. Its varied charms are not to be seen from one spot on its shore like Centre Harbor. They must be sought along all its intricate borders, among its three hundred or more islands, and in boats upon its own bosom. This is the way to find the most delightful single pictures. This is the way to study at leisure landscapes which the swift steamer allows you to see but a moment. This is the way to find delicious "bits," such as artists love for studies, of jutting rock, shaded beach, coy and curving nook, or limpid water prattling upon amethystine sand. At one point, perhaps, a group of graceful trees on one side, a grassy or tangled shore in front, and a rocky cape curving in from the other side, compose an effective foreground to a quiet bay with finely varied borders, and the doublepeaked Belknap in the distance. Or what more charming than to sail slowly along and see the numerous islands and irregular shores change their positions and weave their singular combinations? Now they range themselves on either hand, and hem a vista that extends to the blue base of Copple Crown. Now an island slides its gray or purple form across, and, like a rood-screen, divides the long watery aisle into nave and choir, followed by another and another, till the perspective is confused and the vista disappears. Then in the distance, islands and shores will marshal themselves in long straight lines, fronting you as regular as the phalanxes of an army; and if the sun is low present the embattled effect the more forcibly, with their vertically shadowed sides and brightly lighted tops. Or