Eastern Railroad, for Portland, and thence at noon, by the Grand Trunk Railway, travellers reach the Alpine House in Gorham, N. H., by the cars at about five in the afternoon. They can then proceed by stage, seven or eight miles further, along the bank of the Peabody River, to the large hotel in "The Glen," a most charming opening, where the four highest elevations of the Mount Washington range are in full view from the piazza. If the weather has been dry, and the road is hard, this distance can be travelled in about an hour and a half. The road rises about eight hundred feet from the railroad in Gorham. In very muddy weather more than two hours are needed to reach "The Glen."

Some travellers have but a very few days for the whole tour of the mountain region, and desire, in that time, to see the points of interest that are the most striking, and that will produce the strongest sensation. These will hurry at once by stage to "The Glen," after their day's ride in the cars, that they may reach as quickly as possible the very base of Mount Washington. Their object will then be to make the ascent of it at once, and hurry around to "The Notch," which is thirty-six miles from "The Glen," requiring nine or ten hours by stage. Others, though they have more time at command, hasten from the cars to "The Glen," because they suppose that there is nothing worth staying to see in Gorham.

But in this they strangely mistake. The scenery is not very attractive from the front of the hotel, which was not wisely placed in the valley; but no point in the mountains offers views to be gained by walks of a mile or two, and by drives of five or six miles, that are more noble and memorable. In the latter part of this volume we shall call attention in detail to the attractions with which this whole valley, including "The Glen," is encompassed. We will simply say here that, for river scenery in connection with impressive mountain forms, the immediate vicinity of Gorham surpasses all the other districts from which the highest peaks are visible. The Androscoggin sweeps through the village with a broader bed, and in larger volume, than the Connecticut shows at Lancaster or Littleton.

Only an hour's ride from the hotel carries one to the Berlin Falls, where the river pours its whole tide through a narrow rocky gateway. It descends a hundred feet in the course of a few hundred yards, and then shoots its rapids directly towards the swelling bulk of Mounts Madison and Adams that tower but a few miles distant, and form the northeastern wall of the Mount Washington chain. It is very seldom that the spectacle is afforded of a large river running towards the highest mountains of the region which it drains. And it is still more rare and rich a privilege to find such a view combined with a grand cataract, as in the case of the Androscoggin at Berlin.

Less than an hour's ride to a point below the hotel in Gorham, discloses another view of the river, where, broken by charming islands, and winding through cultivated meadows, it offers exquisite relief to Mount Washington and the two next highest mountains of the chain, which are installed in a magnificent group above the stream, but a few miles off. No one who sees this picture, at the fitting hour of the afternoon and through a favoring air, will be content with a single introduction to its complex and symmetrical beauty.

Such views are illustrations of the loss which tourists suffer, if they have taste for landscape, by not including a day or two in Gorham, for the sake of drives along the Androscoggin, in their plans of a visit to the eastern side of the great chain. The wildness and majesty of the scenery in "The Glen" we cannot be tempted to disparage. Certainly the impression which the hills make upon the senses here is singularly grand. The spot is a little plateau, rising from the banks of the Peabody stream, and guarded on the southeast by the steep, thin, heavily-wooded wall of Mount Carter, and on the northwest by the curving bulwarks of the great ridge, over which spring the rocky domes or spires of Washington, Clay, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison. The comparative impressiveness of the view cannot easily be overestimated.

But it is not landscape beauty that is given in "The Glen." To have that, there must be meadow, river, and greater distance from

the hills, so that they can be seen through large intervening depths of air. Going close to a great mountain is like going close to a powerfully painted picture; you see only the roughnesses, the blotches of paint, the coarsely contrasted hues, which at the proper distance alone are grouped into grandeur and mellowed into beauty.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,

And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Even the height of a great mountain is not usually appreciated by looking up from its base. If it rose in one wall, and tapered regu larly with a smooth surface, like a pyramid, or Bunker Hill monument, the expectations of many persons who rush to the foot of Mount Washington, and suppose that they are to receive an overpowering ocular impression of a mile of vertical height, would be satisfied. But a great mountain is protected by outworks and braced by spurs; its dome retreats modestly by plateaus; and it is only at a distance of some miles that the effect of foreshortening is corrected, and it stands out in full royalty. And from such a point of view alone, by the added effect of atmosphere and shadows, is its real sublimity discerned. The majesty of a mountain is determined by the outlines of its bulk; its expression depends on the distance, and the states of the air through which it is seen.

A visit to New Hampshire supplies the most resources to a traveller, and confers the most benefit on the mind and taste, when it lifts him above mere appetite for wildness, ruggedness, and the feeling of mass and precipitous elevation, into a perception and love of the refined grandeur, the chaste sublimity, the airy majesty overlaid with tender and polished bloom, in which the landscape splendor of a noble mountain lies. The White Mountain region is singularly rich in the varieties of landscape charm which the hills assume. The ridges are so well broken by cones and peaks, the slopes are so diversified, and the valleys wind at such various angles, that a month is insufficient to exhaust the treasures of ever changing beauty which

they hold. This is true even for the tourist who goes to study and enjoy Nature with his eye alone, and with no intention or capacity to use a pencil. Sometimes a distance of ten miles produces a change in the aspects of one ridge, as marked as if we had passed to a different zone. Certainly North Conway and Gorham, Bethlehem and Bartlett, Jefferson and Shelburne, Berlin and Jackson, could not at first be suspected of being set within about equal distance of the same chain of hills.

We should see, then, that by driving as quickly as possible to the very bases of the mountains, and by the general eagerness to get the coarser stimulant of their wildness, travellers lose the opportunity of seeing the deeper landscape loveliness which the mountains wear, and of cultivating the sense to which it is revealed. After the first visit, at any rate, this should be the chief purpose and aim.

And by living several weeks in any valley, and driving frequently over the principal roads, a person is able to learn, not only just where the best pictures are to be seen, but also what a great difference is made in the effect of a landscape by a very slight change of position on the road. A spy-glass is good for nothing, as a help to the sight, unless you get the exact focus. It is quite remarkable how this law of focus-points holds in studying the mountain region. Sometimes the beauty of scenes depends on the hour when you visit them, sometimes on the nicely calculated distance. We have stayed within a few miles of a mountain wall, upon which the forenoon spectacle in clear weather was worth riding every day to see. But in the afternoon, the westerly light made the forests look rusty; roughened the slopes of the ridge; reduced the height of the massive bastions, and chased away their dusky frown. Some hills need rain, or a thick air, to tone down the raggedness of their foreground, and reveal the beauty of their lines. Others show best under the noon-light; others demandthe sunset glow. A prominent charm of North Conway is, that it is one of the proper focal points for Mount Washington. Bethlehem Village is another. And the same distinction must be awarded to portions of the Androscoggin valley near Gorham, in relation to Mount Adams and Mount Madison.

Is it not one of the rich rewards of a long visit in any valley, to be able to drive directly to the seats which Nature has fixed along her picture-gallery, for studying leisurely, to the best advantage, her masterpieces of drawing, her most fascinating combinations of sublimity and loveliness, and the most mystic touches of her pencils of light, that edge the "mountain gloom" with "mountain glory?" Travellers in New Hampshire do not think enough of the simple fact that every triumph of a human artist is only an illusion, producing a semblance of a real charm of air or foliage, of sunset cloud, or dewy grass, or mountain splendor, which Nature offers. If a man could own all the landscape canvas which the first painters of the world have colored, it would not be a tithe so rich an endowment, as if Providence should quicken his eye with keener sensibility to the hues of the west at evening, the grace of trees, and the pomp of piled or drifting clouds.

We have called attention to this law of focal distance in connection with the Androscoggin valley, and to the privilege which belongs to Gorham among other places near the White Hills that rightfully claim our interest, because it is less known, thus far, than any other point of so easy access. And let any traveller who stays in Gorham before going to "The Glen," and who is disposed to test this law in the most satisfactory and decisive way, drive in an open wagon from the Alpine House down the river towards Shelburne. He will find, on the return drive, that a perfectly finished picture is shown from a small hill, about four miles from the hotel, just at the turn of the road that leads to "The Lead-mine Bridge." Mount Madison sits on a plateau over the Androscoggin meadows. No intervening ridges hide his pyramid, or break the keen lines of his sides. He towers clear, symmetrical, and proud, against the vivid blue of the western sky. And as if the bright foreground of the meadows golden in the afternoon light, and the velvety softness of the vague blue shadows that dim the desolation of the mountain, and the hues that flame on the peaks of its lower ridges, and the vigor of its sweep upwards to a sharp crest, are not enough to perfect the