the whole mountain sweeps into view, startling you with its ghostlike pallor, and haggard crest. On a morning when the fog is clearing, is the time to be tempted towards the middle of the lake, to see the islands, whose green looks more exquisite then than in any other atmosphere, stretch away in perspectives dreamy and illusive. Two or three miles of distance seem five times as long, when measured through such genial, moist, and silvery air. And now, if we will bend westward, between curving shores that will grant us ample passage, we shall be glad to find ourselves in the encircled bay near Weir's, and can have leisure to enjoy in silence the gentle slopes of the Belknaps, and the succession of mounds that heave away from them to the southeast, while the fog is rolling up into clouds, and the sunshine slipping down a broad cultivated field on one of the swelling cones, burnishes it to emerald. And towards evening we may glide down. the narrow inlet around which Centre Harbor is built, and follow the shadows, while

Slow up the slopes of Ossipee
They chase the lessening light.

When they have dislodged it all, we can watch, as we return to the village, the "Procession of the Pines," which rise on the southwestern ridge that hems the cove, and be tempted to fancy, as they darken, while the saffron horizon is dying into ashy gray sky, that each of those grotesque and weird forms holds the soul of some grim old Sachem.

If the shores of the Lake were lined with summer-houses, how might the charms of boating upon Winnipiscogee enrich our literature! Our readers of course know what "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" says of the privilege and pleasure of boating. "Here you are afloat with a body a rod and a half long, with arms, or wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad

blades of your oars. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made, or perhaps ever will make.

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June morning, when the river and bay are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a long rood behind me.”

Ah, if "The Autocrat" would visit Winnipiseogee for a season, and cleave its glossy azure with his canoe, and tell us how mountain peaks and lake rhyme themselves in his imagination, or what fancies visit him when he pauses at some rare scene, and the silver has dripped from his resting oar-blades, and the wrinkled curves from his prow have smoothed into calm, and headland, mountain chain, emerald fringes of an island shore, and the snowy islands of the overbrooding blue are repeated beneath him in the sleeping silver! Would that the creeks and armlets of our inland bay, with all their settings, might be reflected thus in "The Atlantic!" Shall we never have our "lake-poets" to celebrate for us the surroundings of Winnipiseogee, as the Cumberland lakes have been interpreted by Wordsworth and his friends? Here is a passage in which Wordsworth describes his rowing over Windermere with a companion :—

Soon as the reedy marge

Was cleared, I dipped, with arms accordant, oars
Free from obstruction; and the boat advanced
Through crystal water, smoothly as a hawk,
That, disentangled from the shady boughs

Of some thick wood, her place of covert, cleaves
With correspondent wings the abyss of air.
-"Observe," the Vicar said, "yon rocky isle
With birch-trees fringed; my hand shall guide the helm
While thitherward we shape our course; or while

We seek that other, on the western shore,
Where the bare columns of those lofty firs,
Supporting gracefully a massy dome

Of sombre foliage, seem to imitate

A Grecian temple rising from the Deep."

"Turn where we may," said I, "we cannot err

In this delicious region." Cultured slopes,

Wild tracts of forest ground, and scattered groves,
And mountains bare, or clothed with ancient woods,
Surrounded us; and, as we held our way

Along the level of the glassy flood,

They ceased not to surround us; change of place,

Producing change of beauty ever new.

Ah! that such beauty, varying in the light

Of living nature, cannot be portrayed

By words, nor by the pencil's silent skill;

But is the property of him alone

Who hath beheld it, noted it with care,

And in his mind recorded it with love!

Why is it that the reflections in a still river or lake as we float over it, or wander by its shores, are so much more charming than the actual scenes? The shallowest still water, it has been happily said, is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. Has the reader ever looked at a landscape by bending his head low, thus turning his eyes upside down, and noticed how much richer are the colors, how much sublimer the sky, how much more vast and impressive the revelation of space? So the landscape turned upside down in the mirror of a lake is unspeakably more bewitching. The mountains that point to the nadir are more fascinating than those that soar to the zenith. The vines and grasses that fringe the unsubstantial coasts below have a sweeter grace than those which can be plucked. Is it not Coleridge who compares with this the superior fascination we find in a character, or in a natural scene, when reported from the imagination of a great poet, than when we see the elements of it in the real world?

We shall not find this exquisite under world, this bottomless deep of ideal beauty, described with strokes more vivid and airy than in the following passage from Rev. Mr. Bartol's "Pictures of Europe," in which he portrays a lake of the Tyrol which no map has ever reported. "Into the pellucid water glides our little boat. As I gazed, I felt almost unsafe, suspended at some dizzy height; for it was as if only the thinnest, finest layer of gossamer fabric were

stretched there for a horizontal veil or floor, and on both sides, the unfathomable abyss. On smoothly darts our secure vessel. I look over her side into the infinite chasm. What keeps her from falling down? On what mysterious support does she ride between these rival skies? How, through this hollow sphere, holds she her level way? Is she a fairy bark, and are we spirits transported now towards some sphere of the blessed? From this mood I was diverted a little, and my mind saved from losing itself in pure ecstasy, by observing the huge forms of the inverted hills, running downward as far as upward, in their erectness, they climbed. What refinement of pleasure was there in remarking the minuteness, as well as vastness of the copy! Ah! no copyist of the old masters can render his original upon the canvas as faithfully in every line and hue, or with expression so perfect and speaking, as it pleases God here to translate his own works in the engravings of this marvellous page. He, too, writes his name in water; and, if it fades with the ruffling wind, it fades but to return again with spell more sweetly binding than if it had not vanished at all. How we admired the submarine curving lines, the diverse shades, each angle flashing back the light, each vapor-shrouded point jutting from the mighty mass,-the shreds of woolly cloud floating underneath, and the winds blowing gently round the spectral mountain's brow as truly as about the other mountain on high! How the double glory divided our regard, till we drew towards the shore from which we were to roll on wheels again by a road hedged in on one side by verdant woods, and on the other by amber streams, that, with their clear, delicious color, told us whence the lake derived its crystal character to make it like one entire and perfect chrysolite!'"

But it is time that we should say something of the charms of color which a long visit by the lake shore will reveal. Many persons suppose that they have seen Winnipiseogee in passing over it in the steamer on their way to Conway and "The Notch." Seen the lake! Which lake? There are a thousand. It is a chameleon.

It is not a steady sapphire set in green, but an opal. Under no two skies or winds is it the same. It is gray, it is blue, it is olive, it is azure, it is purple, at the will of the breezes, the clouds, the hours. Sail over it on some afternoon when the sky is leaden with northeast mists, and you can see the simple beauty of form in which its shores and guards are sculptured. This is the permanent lake which prosaic geology has filled and feeds. And this was placed there to display the riches of color in which the infiniteness of the Creator's art is revealed to us more than in the scale of space.

We have said that the lake is an opal. If persons with artistic delight in color should keep a journal of what would be shown to them during a few weeks, they would be surprised at the octaves that are touched in the course of a short season, and at the suddenness of their transitions. People should learn to notice the changes and combination and range of colors, not merely for the joy that is given at the moment through definite perception, but also for the education of taste in the appreciation and enjoyment of art. How can a person, that has not observed minutely and faithfully the hues and harmonies of a landscape at different times of day, and under widely different conditions of air and cloud and light, intelligently comprehend and judge the products and the genius of the masters of landscape, as displayed in our art rooms? The effect of White Mountain journeys should be seen in our homes, in a purer delight in art, and an intelligent patronage of it. And it is only close observance of the ever changing expressions which flit over the face of Nature, that enlightens taste, and makes it competent for this. It has been well said that a connoisseur who has scampered over all Europe, and who most likely cannot tell the shape of the leaf of an elm, will be voluble of criticism on every painted landscape from Dresden to Madrid, and pretend to decide whether they are like Nature or not. And thus many a person may pronounce upon the tone of a picture, that it is not natural, who has no conception of the scale and freaks of color which a fortnight reveals among the mountains and by Winnipiseogce.