HARMONY OF ALL GRACES AND VIRTUES.

It must not be supposed that a complete catalogue of virtues would do justice to the character under consideration. It is not only the completeness, but still more the even proportion and perfect harmony of virtues and graces apparently opposite and contradictory, which distinguishes him specifically from all other men. This feature has struck with singular force all the more eminent writers on the subject. It gives the finish to that beauty of holiness which is the sublimest picture presented to our contemplation.

He was free from all one-sidedness, which constitutes the weakness as well as the strength of the most eminent men. He was not a man of one idea, nor of one virtue, towering above all the rest. The moral forces were so well tempered and moderated by each other, that none was unduly prominent, none carried to excess, none alloyed by the kindred failing. Each was checked and completed by the opposite grace. His character never lost its even balance and happy equilibrium, never needed modification or re-adjustment. It was thoroughly sound, and uniformly consistent from the beginning to the end.

We cannot properly attribute to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of the phlegmatic temperament.

He was equally far removed from the excesses of the legalist, the pietist, the ascetic, and the enthusiast. With the strictest obedience to the law, he moved in the element of freedom; with all the fervor of the enthusiast, he was always calm, sober, and self-possessed; notwithstanding his complete and uniform elevation above the affairs of this world, he freely mingled with society, male and female, dined with publicans and sinners, sat at the wedding feast, shed tears at the sepulchre, delighted in God's nature, admired the beauties of the lilies, and used the occupations of the husbandman for the illustration of the sublimest truths of the kingdom of heaven. His virtue was healthy, manly, vigorous, yet genial, social, and truly human, never austere and repulsive, always in full sympathy with innocent joy and pleasure. He, the purest and holiest of men, provided wine for the wedding feast, introduced the fatted calf and music and dancing into the picture of welcome of the prodigal son to his father's house, and even provoked the sneer of his adversaries that he 'came eating and drinking,' and was a 'glutton' and a 'winebibber.'

His zeal never degenerated into passion or rashness, his constancy into obstinacy, his benevolence into weakness, nor his tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, his dignity from pride and presumption, his affability from undue familiarity, his self-denial from moroseness, his temperance from austerity. He combined child-like innocence with manly strength, all-absorbing devotion to God with untiring interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness.

He is justly compared with the lion in strength and with the lamb in meekness. He equally possessed the wisdom of the serpent and the simplicity of the dove. He brought both the sword against every form of wickedness, and the peace which the world cannot give. He was the most effective, and yet the least noisy, the most radical, and yet the most conservative, calm, and patient of all reformers. He came to fulfil every letter of the law, and yet he made all things new. The same hand which drove the profane traffickers from the temple, blessed little children, healed the lepers, and rescued the sinking disciple; the same ear which heard the voice of approbation from heaven was open to the cries of the woman in travail; the same mouth which pronounced the terrible woe on hypocrites and condemned the impure desire and unkind feeling as well as the open crime, blessed the poor in spirit, announced pardon to the adulteress, and prayed for his murderers; the same eye which beheld the mysteries of God and penetrated the heart of man shed tears of compassion over ungrateful Jerusalem, and tears of friendship at the grave of Lazarus.

These are indeed opposite, yet not contradictory traits of character, as little as the different manifestations of God's power and goodness in the tempest and the sunshine, in the towering alps and the lily of the valley, in the boundless ocean and the dewdrop of the morning. They are separated in imperfect men, indeed, but united in Christ, the universal model for all.

CHRIST'S PASSION.

Finally, as all active virtues meet in him, so he unites the active or heroic virtues with the passive and gentle. He is equally the highest standard of all true martyrdom.

No character can become complete without trial and suffering, and a noble death is the crowning act of a noble life. Edmund Burke said to Fox, in the English Parliament: 'Obloquy is a necessary ingredient of all true glory. Calumny and abuse are essential parts of triumph.' The ancient Greeks and Romans admired a good man struggling with misfortune as a sight worthy of the gods. Plato describes the righteous man as one who, without doing any injustice, yet has the appearance of the greatest injustice, and proves his own justice by perseverance against all calumny unto death; yea, he predicts that if such a righteous man should ever appear, he would be 'scourged, tortured, bound, deprived of his sight, and, after having suffered all possible injury, nailed on a post.' No wonder that the ancient fathers saw in this remarkable passage an unconscious prophecy of Christ. But how far is this ideal of the great philosopher from the actual reality, as it appeared three hundred years afterward! The great men of this world, who rise even above themselves on inspiring occasions, and boldly face a superior army, are often thrown off their equilibrium in ordinary life, and grow impatient at trifling obstacles. Only think of Napoleon at the head of his conquering legions and at the helm of an empire, and the same Napoleon after the defeat at Waterloo and on the island of St. Helena. The highest form of passive virtue attained by ancient heathenism or modern secular heroism is that stoicism which meets and overcomes the trials and misfortunes of life in the spirit of haughty contempt and unfeeling indifference, which destroys the sensibilities, and is but another exhibition of selfishness and pride.

Christ has set up a far higher standard by his teaching, and example, never known before or since, except in imperfect imitation of him. He has revolutionized moral philosophy, and convinced the world that forgiving love to the enemy, holiness and humility, gentle patience in suffering, and cheerful submission to the holy will of God is the crowning excellency of moral greatness. 'If thy brother,' he says, 'trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.' 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' This is a sublime maxim, truly, but still more sublime is its actual exhibition in his life.

Christ's passive virtue is not confined to the closing scenes of his ministry. As human life is beset at every step by trials, vexations, and hindrances, which should serve the educational purpose of developing its resources and proving its strength, so was Christ's. During the whole state of his humiliation he was 'a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,' and had to endure 'the contradiction of sinners.' He was poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the devil. His path was obstructed with apparently insurmountable difficulties from the outset. His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the world, which resulted at last in the bloody counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies and quarrels in opposing him. They rejected and perverted his testimony; they laid snares for him by insidious questions; they called him a glutton and a winebibber for eating and drinking like other men, a friend of publicans and sinners for his condescending love and mercy, a sabbath breaker for doing good on the sabbath day; they charged him with madness and blasphemy for asserting his unity with the Father, and derived his miracles from Beelzebub, the prince of devils. The common people, though astonished at his wisdom and mighty works, pointed sneeringly at his origin; his own country and native town refused him the honor of a prophet. Even his brothers, we are told, did not believe in him, and in their impatient zeal for a temporal kingdom, they found fault with his unostentatious proceeding. His apostles and disciples, with all their profound reverence for his character and faith in his divine origin and mission as the Messiah, of God, yet by their ignorance, their carnal Jewish notions, and their almost habitual misunderstanding of his spiritual discourses, must have constituted a severe trial of patience to a teacher of far less superiority to his pupils.

To all this must be added the constant sufferings from sympathy with human misery as it met him in ten thousand forms at every step. What a trial for him, the purest, gentlest, most tender hearted, to breath more than thirty years the foul atmosphere of this fallen world, to see the constant outbursts of sinful passions, to hear the great wail of humanity borne to his ear upon the four winds of heaven, to be brought into personal contact with the blind, the lame, the deaf, the paralytic, the lunatic, the possessed, the dead, and to be assaulted, as it were, by the concentrated force of sickness, sorrow, grief, and agony!

But how shall we describe his passion, more properly so called, with which no other suffering can be compared for a moment! There is a lonely grandeur in it, foreshadowed in the word of the prophet; 'I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with me.' If great men occupy a solitary position, far above the ordinary level, on the sublime heights of thought or action, how much more then Jesus in his sufferings; he, the purest and holiest of beings! The nearer a man approaches to moral perfection, the deeper are his sensibilities, the keener his sense of sin and evil and sorrow in this wicked world. Never did any man suffer more innocently, more unjustly, more intensely, than Jesus of Nazareth. Within the narrow limits of a few hours we have here a tragedy of universal significance, exhibiting every form of human weakness and infernal wickedness, of ingratitude, desertion, injury, and insult, of bodily and mental pain and anguish, culminating in the most ignominious death then known among the Jews and Gentiles, the death of a malefactor and a slave. The government and the people combined against him who came to save them. His own disciples forsook him; Peter denied him; Judas, under the inspiration of the devil, betrayed him. The rulers of the nation condemned him, rude soldiers mocked him, the furious mob cried: 'Crucify him!' He was seized in the night, hurried from tribunal to tribunal, arrayed in a crown of thorns, insulted, smitten, scourged, spit upon, and hung like a criminal and a slave between two robbers and murderers!

How did Christ bear all these little and great trials of life, and the death on the cross?

Let us remember first, that, unlike the icy stoics in their unnatural and repulsive pseudo-virtue, he had the keenest sensibilities and the deepest sympathies with all human grief, that made him even shed tears at the grave of a friend and in the agony of the garden, and provide a refuge for his mother in the last dying hour. But with this truly human tenderness and delicacy of feeling, he ever combined an unutterable dignity and majesty, a sublime self-control and imperturbable calmness of mind. There is a solitary grandeur and majesty in his deepest sufferings, which forbids a feeling of pity and compassion on our side as incompatible with the admiration and reverence for his character. We feel the force of his words to the women of Jerusalem, when they bewailed him on the way to Cavalry: 'Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children.' We never hear him break out in angry passion and violence, although he was at war with the whole ungodly world. He clearly and fully foresaw and repeatedly foretold his sufferings to his disciples.

And yet never murmured, never uttered discontent, displeasure, or resentment. He was never disheartened, discouraged, ruffled, or fretted, but full of unbounded confidence that all was well ordered in the providence of his Heavenly Father. His calmness in the tempest on the lake, when his disciples were trembling on the brink of destruction and despair, is an illustration of his heavenly frame of mind. All his works were performed with a quiet dignity and ease that contrasts most strikingly with the surrounding commotion and excitement. He never asked the favor, or heard the applause, or feared the threat of the world. He moved serenely like the sun above the clouds of human passions and trials and commotions, as they sailed under him. He was ever surrounded by the element of peace, even in his parting hour in that dark and solemn night, when he said to his disturbed disciples: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.' He was never what we call unhappy, but full of inward joy, which he bequeathed to his disciples in that sublimest of all prayers, 'that they might have his joy fulfilled in themselves.' With all his severe rebuke to the Pharisees, he never indulged in personalities. He ever returned good for evil. He forgave Peter for his denial, and would have forgiven Judas, if in the exercise of sincere repentance he had sought his pardon. Even while hanging on the cross, he had only the language of pity for the wretches who were driving the nails into his hands and feet, and prayed in their behalf: 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He did not seek or hasten his martyrdom, like many of the early martyrs of the Ignatian type, in their morbid enthusiasm and ambitious humility, but quietly and patiently waited for the hour appointed by the will of his Heavenly Father.

But when the hour came, with what self-possession and calmness, with what strength and meekness, with what majesty and gentleness did he pass through its dark and trying scenes! A prisoner before Pilate, who represented the power of the Roman empire, he professes himself a king of truth, and makes the governor tremble before him. Charged with crime at the tribunal of the high priest, he speaks to him with the majesty and dignity of the judge of the world. And in the agony of death on the cross he dispenses a place in paradise to the penitent robber. In the history of the passion, every word and act are unutterably significant, from the agony in Gethsemane, when, overwhelmed with the sympathetic sense of the entire guilt of mankind, and in full view of the terrible scenes before him—the only guiltless being in the world—he prayed that the cup might pass from him, but immediately added, 'Not my but thy will be done,' to the triumphant exclamation on the cross, 'It is finished!' Even his dignified silence before the tribunal of his enemies and the furious mob, when 'as a lamb dumb before his shearers he opened not his mouth,' is more eloquent than any apology. Who will venture to bring a parallel from the annals of ancient or modern sages, when even a Rousseau confessed: 'If Socrates suffered and died like a philosopher, Christ suffered and died like a God!' The passion and crucifixion of Jesus, like his whole character, stands without a parallel, solitary and alone in its glory, and will ever continue to be what it has been for these eighteen hundred years, the most sacred theme of meditation, the highest exemplar of suffering virtue, the strongest weapon against sin and Satan, the deepest source of comfort to the noblest and best of men.

SUMMARY—CHRIST'S CHARACTER THE GREATEST MORAL MIRACLE IN HISTORY.

Such was Jesus of Nazareth—a true man in body, soul, and spirit, yet differing from all men, a character absolutely unique and original, from tender childhood to ripe manhood moving in unbroken union with God, overflowing with the purest love to man, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and practising all virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness loses on closer inspection; but Christ's character grows more and more pure, sacred, and lovely, the better we know him.

No biographer, moralist, or artist can be satisfied with any attempt of his to set it forth. It is felt to be infinitely greater than any conception or representation of it by the mind, the tongue, and the pencil of man or angel. We might as well attempt to empty the waters of the boundless sea into a narrow well, or to portray the splendor of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Duerer or Rubens—no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock, can improve on the artless narrative of the gospel, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In this case certainly truth is stranger and stronger than fiction, and speaks best itself without comment, explanation, and eulogy. Here and here alone the highest perfection of art falls short of the historical fact, and fancy finds no room for idealizing the real. For here we have the absolute ideal itself in living reality. It seems to me that this consideration alone should satisfy the reflecting mind that Christ's character, though truly natural and human, must be at the same time truly supernatural and divine.

Even Goethe, the most universal and finished, but at the same time the most intensely worldly of all modern poets, calls Christ 'the Divine Man,' the 'Holy One,' and represents him as the pattern and model of humanity. Thomas Carlyle, the great hero-worshipper, found no equal in all the range of ancient and modern heroism; he calls his life a 'perfect ideal poem,' and his person 'the greatest of all heroes,' whom he does not name, leaving 'sacred silence to meditate that sacred matter.' And Ernest Renan, the celebrated French orientalist and critic, who views Jesus from the standpoint of a pantheistic naturalism, and expels all miracles from the gospel history, calls him 'the incomparable man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice, since he caused religion to take a step in advance incomparably greater than any other in the past, and probably than any yet to come;' and he closes his 'Life of Jesus' with the remarkable concession: 'Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus.'

The whole range of history and fiction furnishes no parallel to such a character. There never was anything even approaching to it before or since, except in faint imitation of his example. It cannot be explained on purely human principles, nor derived from any intellectual and moral forces of the age in which he lived. On the contrary, it stands in marked contrast to the whole surrounding world of Judaism and heathenism, which present to us the dreary picture of internal decay, and which actually crumbled into ruin before the new moral creation of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. He is the one absolute and unaccountable exception to the universal experience of mankind. He is the great central miracle of the whole gospel history, and all his miracles are but the natural and necessary manifestations of his miraculous person, performed with the same ease with which we perform our ordinary daily works.

In vain has infidelity, in ever-changing shapes and forms, assailed the everlasting foundation of this greatest and sublimest character that ever blessed or will bless the earth. He arises brighter and stronger from every fiery ordeal of criticism, and stands out to every beholder as the greatest benefactor of the race and the only Saviour from sin and ruin.

Yes! he still lives, the Divine Man and incarnate God, on the ever fresh and self-authenticating record of the Gospels, in the unbroken history of eighteen centuries, and in the hearts and lives of the wisest and best of our race. Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most sacred, and the most glorious of all facts, arrayed in a beauty and majesty which throws the 'starry heavens above us and the moral law within us' into obscurity, and fills us truly with ever-growing reverence and awe. He shines forth with the self-evidencing light of the noonday sun. He is too great, too pure, too perfect to have been invented by any sinful and erring man. His character and claims are confirmed by the sublimest doctrine, the purest ethics, the mightiest miracles, the grandest spiritual kingdom, and are daily and hourly exhibited in the virtues and graces of all who yield to the regenerating and sanctifying power of his spirit and example. The historical Christ meets and satisfies our deepest intellectual and moral wants. Our souls, if left to their noblest impulses and aspirations, instinctively turn to him as the needle to the magnet, as the flower to the sun, as the panting hart to the fresh fountain. We are made for him, and 'our heart is without rest until it rests in him.' He commands our assent, he wins our admiration, he overwhelms us to humble adoration and worship. We cannot look upon him without spiritual benefit. We cannot think of him without being elevated above all that is low and mean, and encouraged to all that is good and noble. The very hem of his garment is healing to the touch; one hour spent in his communion outweighs all the pleasures of sin. He is the most precious and indispensable gift of a merciful God to a fallen world. In him are the treasures of true wisdom, in him the fountain of pardon and peace, in him the only substantial hope and comfort of this world and that which is to come. Mankind could better afford to lose the whole literature of Greece and Rome, of Germany and France, of England and America, than the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Without him, history is a dreary waste, an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without meaning, connection, and aim; with him it is a beautiful, harmonious revelation, the slow but sure unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom and love: all ancient history converging to his coming, all modern history receiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: 'The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.' He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our intellectual desires after truth, all our moral aspirations after goodness and holiness, and the longing of our feelings after peace and happiness.

Not for all the wealth and wisdom of this world would I weaken the faith of the humblest Christian in his Divine Lord and Saviour; but if, by the grace of God, I could convert a single sceptic to a child-like faith in him, who lived and died for me and for all, I would feel that I had not lived in vain.



APHORISMS.—NO. XV.

'Men,' saith my Lord Bacon, 'think to govern words by their own reason: but it also happens that words throw back their force upon the understanding;' and thus, we may justly add, often distort our thoughts, and lead us to very erroneous conclusions.

This is apparently the case with the word motive, in speaking of human volitions. A motive power in mechanics is one that produces motion; and hence the application of the word to the occasion or reason of any particular act of choice, with the all but inevitable fallacy of confounding the idea of a mechanical force with that of an influence upon the mind. That there is some analogy must be admitted; but that there is such similarity as is often assumed, we are obliged to deny. The almost total difference between a mechanical power and a thought or desire—between a material and spiritual subject of operation—is too apt to be left out of the account.



SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.

VI.—TO SARANAC AND BACK.

Few indeed are the pleasures that can be compared with the keen enjoyment of travel in a new and beautiful country, where every sense is stimulated by the purest and most aromatic of atmospheres, and where rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, and skies offer every possibility of combination imaginable under the structural conditions of the region. The life of the scout and the pioneer is a constant succession of pleasant surprises and unanticipated adventure; every hilltop promises a new picture, every dawn and sunset an additional novelty for that gallery, longer than the Louvre, and fuller than the Vatican, of which memory holds the key and is sole warden. Hardship and even danger are enclosed in surroundings so beautiful, so fresh and invigorating, that they seem only to add zest to the pursuit, to give dignity and significance to an occupation which might perhaps otherwise be stigmatized as mere selfish vagabondage. Oh, the freedom of the wild woods! the rest to the soul of the shadowy forest and flower-strewn turf! The wind may toss the locks, the sun brown the skin, and the brambles tear the garments, but there are none to cavil, none to count the gray hairs or the freckles, or see that said garments are of last year's fashioning. If the eyes look kindly, the peering squirrels will be content, and if the voice be gentle, the birds will ask no more, except, perhaps, a crumb or two from the slender stock of woodsman's fare. The deer and the trout will not question our philosophy, knowing instinctively, as we do, that there is a great God who made us all, and who ever encompasseth us with a love surpassing every created conception. They will only ask of our good will, and that our absolute need be the limit of our tax upon their lives. With the sky for roof, and the beech and the pine for friends and teachers, the body has time to strengthen, and the conscience and inner self to grow steadily upright, that they may overtop trifles, rise to the height of heavenly inspirations, and hence win power to withstand the surging floods of bewildering human passion. When men meet such souls, they are amazed at their calmness and simplicity, and dimly guess that the All-Powerful, through His created universe, has been whispering to them secrets of strength, perseverance, patience, and charity.

But this subject is boundless as its origin, and we must now to the particulars of a personal experience, which, if limited, may yet be of service to others desirous of journeying in the same region.

Having made a thorough acquaintance with the environs of Elizabethtown, Elsie and I could no longer resist the blandishment of the blue mountains ever beckoning us westward through the rocky portal of the Keene Pass. July 13th, at six A.M., we started in the weekly stage for Saranac, thirty-six miles distant. The morning was bright; a few low clouds hung about the tops of the higher hills, and the wind blew from the east, a direction which here, contrary to our experience near the seaboard, by no means implies rain. So great is the distance of the Adirondac plateau from the sea, so numerous its ranges, and so great the elevation of the ridges lying between it and the ocean, that we found our ordinary weather calculations all come to nought, east winds blowing for days without a drop of rain, and western breezes bringing clouds and moisture.

The road to Keene winds along a branch of the Boquet River, on which are one or two quite pretty falls, with consequent mills; it ascends continually until it reaches the foot of the steep rocks forming the Keene Pass. The views back over the Boquet Valley and toward the Green Mountains of Vermont are very lovely, and those obtained in descending the western slope of this, the Boquet range, are magnificent. Soon left behind are the high cliffs and the steep slide, where a gathering avalanche of rocks and earth swept through a forest, carrying off a great belt of timber, wherewith to strew the little valley, and block the road and stream below. The rugged mountains on either hand have been burnt over, and send up into the blue ether bare, white, foot-enticing peaks. At the base of the western declivity lies the valley of the East Branch of the Au Sable, and beyond, the great Adirondac range, overtopped by Whiteface and Mount Tahawus. We greeted these giants with due reverence, hoping for a nearer acquaintance, for only their extreme summits are visible from that point, Whiteface bold and peaked, Tahawus round and indistinct. The great ridge, hiding all but their heads, is here jagged or flowing, steep, and dark with spruce and pine. It rises like an impassable wall; of a clear morning, a frowning barrier of granite and forest; of a hazy afternoon, the shining, glowing rampart of some celestial city.

The village of Keene is a straggling collection of dwellings, with an inn, a post office, and a store or two. It lies in the intervale bordering the East Branch of the Au Sable, and is twelve miles from Elizabethtown.

Thus far, our only fellow traveller had been a school girl, going home for the summer vacation. At Keene our number was increased by the addition of another damsel, with accompaniment of two hounds, Spart and Prince, bound for Saranac. When first fastened behind the open wagon (our stage), they began a vigorous quarrel, which struck us very much as a matrimonial squabble, both tied, and neither having a fair chance for a free fight. Our driver, an excellent specimen of the upright and intelligent man of Northern New York, cracked his whip, increased the existing merriment by calling out, 'Wal, dogs, hev ye done fightin'?' and started up the long declivity leading over the Adirondac range, through Pitch-off Mountain (another pass), to the plains of North Elba. The hill is a long one, the cliffs of the mountain pass exceedingly picturesque, and the black tarn under the beetling crags suggestive of Poe's 'House of Usher.' Long, however, ere we reached this point, Spart had gnawed through his rope, and was trotting beside the wagon. Our driver vainly endeavored to refasten him. Although mild of visage, and apparently good-natured, he showed so formidable a set of teeth, that it was thought prudent to desist, and trust to his following his companion, who still trotted along, coughing and choking, and almost stifled by our own dust, blown after us by the east wind. After this attempt, Spart evidently played shy of our whole party, and, having raced ahead during a few miles, finally disappeared in the woods, probably attracted by the scent of game.

We reached North Elba (twelve miles from Keene) about noon, and there stopped to dine at Scott's, a place widely and favorably known to travellers in that section of country. Round the plain of North Elba tower the very highest peaks of the Adirondacs; Tahawus (Marcy), Golden, McIntire, and the beautiful gateway of the Indian Pass to the south, and to the north the scarred sides of Whiteface and the bold forms of the mountains bordering the Wilmington notch. Descending the plain into the village, we came to the West Branch of the Au Sable, which rises in the Indian Pass, and flows past the former dwelling of John Brown. The little wooden tenement is in full view from the road, and stands in the midst of the clearing made by old John himself, with the aid of his sons. His grave is in the garden near the house, beside a huge rock. The place is of his own selection, and is now visited by many who, while reprehending the means taken by the gray-haired enthusiast for the accomplishment of his designs, cannot but rejoice that the final freedom of every human being within the limits of our country seems so probable a result of the present struggle. The neighbors—even those of opposing political creeds—give John Brown an excellent character for integrity and charitable deeds. His family have all left the region, and are, I believe, scattered through the great West.

Crossing the Au Sable, we soon came to the tamarac forests and whortleberry plains, so characteristic of the tract between that river and the Saranac lakes. We had left the arbor vitae and the juniper with the Boquet range, the beech and maple with the valleys and the lower portions of the Adirondac, and now found ourselves chiefly amid birches, yellow and white, spruce firs, and interminable stretches of fantastic tamarac. The hills lower as we reach the lake region proper, and, while still picturesque, the Saranacs can boast no near mountains such as skirt Lake Placid and the two 'Ponds of the Au Bable.' Tahawus and Whiteface are indeed visible from the Saranac waters, but far away, and shorn of much of their grandeur. The lakes themselves are elevated some twelve hundred feet, perhaps, above the level of the sea, and the climate is correspondingly bracing and delightful. There are at Saranac two inns, at either of which the traveller can make himself very comfortable. At six o'clock P. M., we found ourselves at the house immediately upon the lake, and, after an excellent supper, were ready for a row upon the clear, shining water. The evening was delightful, the sun just setting, the low, wooded shores (rising beyond into higher hills) flooded with golden light, the temperature elysian, our oarsman broad browed, broad shouldered, and athletic, our boat one of the fairy craft, sharp at both ends, and light as possible, borne by guides over portages from lake to lake, and the whole scene as placidly beautiful and reposeful as the most vivid imagination could desire. War, contention, suffering, even the law, trade, politics, or any acute state of feeling, seemed incomprehensible excrescences upon the normal state of man's being, which there, indeed, appeared to be an endless floating over placid waters, with the tinkling of oars and the even song of birds for all needful sounds, and those long, low, slanting rays of golden light forever stealing through half-closed lids, and steeping the nerves and brain and tired senses in long dreams of peace and quietude—dreams without the wearisomeness of monotony or the shock of awaking.

Night, however, came at last, and with it forgetfulness; morning, too, came in due season, and with it, the daily call for active thought and exertion.

From Saranac, by means of boats, guides, and camping out, delightful excursions can be made through the lakes, the two Saranacs, Round, Long, and Racket Lakes, and the Racket River. This region has been much travelled and often described.

Our faces, however, must be turned eastward, and the following day found us again in our wagon, en route for Placid Lake. To reach this, we left the return stage about two miles west of North Elba, and walked northward two miles through open country and some beautiful woodland, until we came out upon Bennet's Pond, on whose shore stands the pleasant farmhouse where we intended to pass the night. The owner and his family were absent, but we found a smiling little handmaiden, who brought us a cooling draught, and an antique whaler, who offered to show us the way to Lake Placid and give us a row.

Placid Lake is a beautiful, clear sheet of water, about five miles long and two or three wide. It is divided down the centre by three islands, charmingly wooded. The surrounding mountains are high, and at the north-easterly end rises Whiteface, nearly, if not quite, 5,000 feet in height, the lower portion clad in deciduous trees, the middle in spruce, and the upper rising bare and white, with a great slide of many hundred feet extending from the top toward the lake, and marking out the steep pathway by which the ascent must be made. Bennet's Pond is about a mile and a half long, and half a mile broad. Bennet is a contraction of Benedict—Benedictus—Blessed—and never, surely, did blue expanse of limpid crystal better merit the appellation—Lake of the Blessed. Its shores are gently sloping, and beyond the nearer hills rise the giant summits of the highest peaks. These two sheets of water are within a quarter of a mile of each other, but have no communication, and are divided by a ridge of land, chiefly cleared, from whose top the view is as beautiful as any view from the same elevation to be obtained in America. To the north lies Lake Placid, with its shining waves, its islands, and the stately Whiteface; and to the south, the heaven-reflecting Lake of the Blessed, crowned by the noble dome of Tahawus, and his splendid retinue, Colden, McMartin, McIntire, Wallface, Dial Mountain, Nipple Top, and Moriah. To the east and west are wooded hills, completing the panorama, and enclosing a scene as enchanting as any single one the writer ever looked upon.

The following day our host, who had meantime returned, drove us down through the Wilmington Pass to Upper Jay, and thence through Keene to the Keene Flats, a distance in all of between twenty and twenty-five miles.

The Wilmington Pass, though not so rough and rugged as its far-famed rival, the Indian Pass, is far more beautiful, and quite as majestic. The great cliffs overhanging the road, and the swift Au Sable, the fine rapids, and the fall of over a hundred feet, the noble views of Whiteface and the dark, steep peaks rising round it, all combine to render this one of the most impressive mountain chasms we have ever visited. After passing through the defile, we left the West Branch of the Au Sable, and crossed a low ridge to Upper Jay, where we again came upon the East Branch, and ploughed our way through heavy sands to Keene, where we dined, and whence the road up the valley to the Keene Flats becomes firmer and less tedious. The way was bordered by rich fields of grass and grain, potatoes in abundance, flax in pale azure flower, and acres blue with the beautiful campanula or harebell. At the inn in Keene we met our rebellious friend Spart, who, having tired of his chase, had returned to his former headquarters.

Toward the 'Flats,' five miles above Keene, the intervale grows narrower, and the bordering mountains become loftier, wilder, and correspondingly more grand. Dix's Peak towers above the southern extremity of the valley.

We passed the night at a comfortable farmhouse, there being no inn at the 'Flats,' and the following morning were driven back to Elizabethtown, with the increased store of information, health, and admiration for the Adirondac country we had amassed during our three and a half days' scouting excursion.

MOUNT TAHAWUS.

The beginning of August found us once more housed under the neat roof of our farmer host at the Keene Flats, and not only Elsie and myself, but also sundry friends, drawn thither by our praise of the beauty of the land and the fineness of the air. There were the brilliant M. W. C., learned in all philosophical lore, and with feeling and imagination sufficient to furnish out half a dozen poets; the staid but energetic M. T., whose portrait in our gallery occupies, a conspicuous place in the small niche devoted to model women; the gay and witty A. I., whose blue eyes imperil so many hearts, but whose frank, keen speech quickly puts to rout all popinjays and useless danglers; also E. B. C. (our Diogenes), a faithful knight from Caissa's thoughtful train, a rapid walker and sharp thinker; and last, a merry little four-year-old, whose quaint sayings are heeded and treasured as if emanations from Delphos or Dodona. Our Orpheus had gone to Saranac.

Our purpose was to visit the Au Sable Ponds, with the waterfalls in their neighborhood, and to ascend Mount Tahawus; but alas! for weather! The haze settled down so thickly that the nearest hills were undistinguishable. A violent thunder storm came, but brought no relief. Desperate, we thought we might at least see the ponds and the falls, and early one hazy morning started off with strong wagon, stout horses, and careful driver. The distance to the Lower Pond is seven miles—three excellent, and four so execrable that nearly all our party preferred walking to the jolting over rocks and stumps and ploughing through rich, deep forest mould, dignified by the name of driving. This is a new road, just opened, and the intention is, we believe, to work it into better shape as rapidly as possible. The intervale ceases at the end of the first three miles, where the road leaves the Au Sable and winds up a hill to the last clearing, whence the view to the blasted, riven sides of Mount Moriah, towering opposite, is wonderfully grand. Thousands of acres of bare rock, scarred and lined, and apparently nearly perpendicular, form the western slope of that gaunt giant. The road soon after passes the cabin of one of the oldest pioneers of the region, crosses Gill Brook, on which are some charming cascades, and, through a noble forest of beech, basswood, maple, birch, and some evergreens, finds its way to the lofty shores of the Lower Pond. Arrived there, the haze was thicker than ever, giving to view only the sparkling waters at our feet, and the nearest mountains, whose craggy sides overhang the lake. To cap the climax, a fishing party had carried off both boats, so that a nearer acquaintance with the Lower Pond was impossible, and the Upper could not be seen at all—these ponds forming no exception to the general Adirondac rule, that any sheet of water navigable for boats requires no road upon its bank. And indeed, a road round this Lower Pond would be a considerable undertaking, the shores are so steep and high, the rocks often rising perpendicularly from the water. Crossing the great dam at the outlet, our guide led us through tangled patches of magnificent wild raspberries, 'through brake and through briar,' to the opening of a narrow gorge through which poured a small stream. Climbing up over the rocks and bowlders, we soon reached the end of the chasm, where we were enchanted by the spectacle of the most fairy-like and peculiar waterfall we had ever beheld. The Cascade Brook here falls over a precipice of about 150 feet. The little stream at this point makes a right-angled turn, and thus is built up an opposing wall of equal height. The chasm is so deep and narrow, that the water, descending in a silvery veil, seems flowing from the clouds. A heavy fringe of trees bordering the top, adds to the mystery and the apparent elevation. The campanula, as is usual with this delicate blossom, hangs out its blue bella and slender foliage from every jutting cornice and earth-filled cranny. Below, the water has worn away a series of steep, narrow steps, and comes leaping and foaming down, as if a magic wand had touched the rocks, and at each touch a springing fountain had gushed forth.

On our way back to the 'Flats,' we went a mile off the main road, to visit another fall on Roaring Brook. The precipice here is some 250 feet in height. A great slide has bared the rock for many yards on either side of the fall, which has worn deep grooves for its passage, and clings to the face of the mountain, as if it feared to lose itself amid the savagery of the surrounding desolation. Here, as in all the neighboring region, are plainly visible the terrible effects of the great freshet of October 1st, 1856. We were told that, in the vicinity of this fall, neither the heavy rain nor the rushing waters could for a time be heard, only the rattling and battering of stones, as if the Titans had again taken to pelting the poor earth with whatever of rock and bowlder they could lay their hands upon. The State dam at the outlet of the lower Au Sable broke down, and the freed lake rushed out through the valley, over the meadows, carrying away bridges, dams, mills, houses, and whole fields of earth, with their crops. The Au Sable River rose three feet in fifteen minutes, and many persons perished before aid could reach them. Bowlders, rocks, trees, stumps, and timber were whirled along by the boiling flood. Bowlders of six feet in diameter were afterward found lying twenty feet above the bed of a brook where trout had been caught before the freshet. They had been brought down stream some forty rods, and piled one above another. The effects of the rise were felt all the way to the mouth of the river, the high stone bridge at Keeseville being the only one on the whole course left standing, and that, to this day, bearing a stone inscription marking the almost incredible height to which the water rose on that eventful first of October. The inhabitants of the region sued the State for damages; but as the dam had been constructed in consequence of a petition of sundry of those inhabitants, for the purpose of running logs down the river at all seasons, the court decided that the State was not responsible for the consequences. John's Brook, which flows into the Au Sable near the farmhouse at which we stayed, bears wild marks of this desolating freshet; indeed, one can scarcely credit the fact that the pretty little stream and smoothly purling river could ever have met in such desperate conflict as is evidenced by the scars and rifts still existing near their confluence.

This John's Brook, by the way, is the shortest route up Mount Tahawus, the entire distance from the 'Flats' being only ten miles. As the greater number of visitors, however, desire to see the Au Sable Ponds en passant, no path has been 'bushed out,' and that mode of ascent is practicable only for hunters or woodsmen familiar with the region.

At length a 'wind blew out of the north, chilling and killing' that terrible haze, and rendering the prospect of a distant view at least possible. Tahawus loomed up before the mind's eye clear and majestic. Such an invitation being irresistible, the little party were soon ready for their journey, said party consisting of Elsie, E. B. C., and Lucy D., with three guides—an old pioneer, short, slight, weather-beaten, and sun-browned, a younger aspirant for scouting honors, tall, handsome, and athletic, and a novice, making his first ascent of the kingly mountain, but offering a pair of broad shoulders that promised to do good service in the bearing of the necessary packs. Each guide carried his own axe, blanket, and provisions, and, in addition, his share of our united baggage, which consisted of a thick Mexican blanket, four shawls, two heavy and two lighter, a woollen cap, a water-proof cloak with hood, one overcoat, two loaves of bread, a small piece of salt pork, a little can of butter, two or three pounds of maple sugar, a little bag of cornmeal, two pounds of crackers, the same quantity of chocolate, some tea, a small tin pail, a frying pan, three tin saucers, three knives, forks, and spoons. A pint of brandy and the same of whiskey were carried in flasks to meet emergencies of cold or weariness, and a canteen for water was also taken to serve as a pitcher, and to bear that refreshing element to heights where no springs could be hoped for. It will be seen that we had reduced our appliances to the smallest quantity compatible with proper warmth and nourishment, and the possibility of being detained out several days, perhaps, by stress of weather. We had at first thought india-rubber blankets indispensable, but having been advised against their use as conducive to rheumatism, and, besides, finding them difficult to procure, we started without, and certainly never missed them. The garments worn on such an excursion should, as far as practicable, all be woollen, and the shoes moderately thick, but not too heavy. A light umbrella will be found a useful addition in case of sudden rain or very hot sun. Each person will carry such toilet arrangements as he or she may deem necessary, only let them be as light as possible, every ounce on such a tramp soon becoming a matter of serious consequence.

We left the farmhouse at half past six in the morning, and drove in the wagon as far as the road was good, three miles, namely, to the last cabin on the way to the Au Sable Ponds. There our guides shouldered their packs, and our party was increased by the addition of 'Uncle David,' another ancient pioneer, who was to row us up the Lower Pond in a large Albany-built boat kept by him for that purpose. He talks of building a moderate-sized tenement at the lower end of the lake, for the accommodation of travellers. I doubt not it would be well patronized.

Now, our Diogenes does not use the lantern of his wit so much to seek out a thoroughly honest man, as to discover the honesty and good will pertaining to each individual specimen of the genus homo. The consequence is a series of pleasant results, people usually showing him whatever of good may be in them, and esteeming him proportionately. As Uncle David was discussing the amount of furniture required for his intended caravansary, he paused to ask if feather beds would be thought a necessity. Diogenes replied that 'every goose needing feathers could bring them on his own back,' which shaft took immensely, as proved by the loud guffaws and low chuckles that echoed through the beautiful forest whose branches shaded us from the August sun. His reputation as a wit of the first water was firmly established, and every pun and jest thereafter succeeding was crowned by the halo of this first success.

The four miles to the Pond were speedily and gayly accomplished, and there we took boat to cross the lake, Uncle David rowing us, and the good-humored, broad-shouldered 'novice,' the scow to be used for our return, in case we were not back at the time then supposed probable. 'Bill's' rowing was the source of much merriment, the strokes proving powerful, but the course amusingly devious. So little does it take to entertain people in the woods, who have laid aside grim behavior and questioning philosophies, and have for the nonce become veritable children of nature, knowing that this earth is beautiful and that God is good, and caring for little else.

The Lower Au Sable Pond is from one to two miles long, its banks are craggy, steep, and high, the general impression grand and somewhat desolate. The dam, by raising the water, has destroyed many of the trees along the shore, and filled the upper portion with driftwood, which blocks the channel and is altogether unsightly. There is a winter road, a mile in length, cut through the forest from the Lower to the Upper Pond. This road is so overgrown that in summer it is a mere pathway. The Upper Pond reached, we again embarked in a light boat, our young athlete rowing. Uncle David had quitted us at the upper lake. This row was not necessary, the path to Tahawus, or Mount Mercy, as our guides called it, turning off at a right angle from the lower end of the upper lake, but was taken to show us the inexpressibly lovely Upper Pond, and transport us to certain bark shanties presumed to offer excellent facilities for dining purposes. The lake is about two miles long, and one broad. Its shores are gently sloping, and wooded with splendid trees of the primeval forest, beech, birch, maple, and spruce. The soil is excellent, and the wild flowers and mosses are luxuriant and abundant. The steep rocks circling the Lower Pond are visible through a cleft, the singular, jagged ridge known as the Gothic Mountains is in full view, the sharp peak of the Haystack lifts its bare top far into the skies, the North River Mountain crowns the south, and graceful waving lines of wooded hill complete the circle; the clear water gives back the most wonderful reflections, and those 'ladies of the forest,' the white birches, could ask no more transparent mirror. There is nothing to mar the effect of the whole, no driftwood, no burnt patches, no ragged-looking clearing—all is harmonious and entirely satisfactory.

Our dinner was a light one. Indeed, our experience was, that while we required a substantial breakfast and supper, but little was needed in the middle of the day, and that little better cold than warm.

Returning in the boat to the end of the lake, we struck into the pathway to Tahawus, a track of hunters, marked by sable traps; and here began work in earnest. The pioneer took the lead, sweating and grumbling under his load, for the day was warm, and the sun but little over an hour past the meridian. Fortunately, he was not a very rapid walker, making only from two to two and a half miles per hour, so there was no danger of fatigue to any of the party, except to our Diogenes, who measures weariness by time and not by miles, walking more easily eight miles in two hours than in four.

On and up we went, ascending a gentle declivity until we came to a brook said to be two miles from the boat landing. There we cooled, rested, and drank of the fresh, clear water, before commencing the steep ascent of the Bartlett Mountain, a spur of the Haystack, needful to be crossed before reaching the actual foot of Tahawus. The ascent is some three quarters of a mile, and the descent on the other side about as far, but not nearly so steep or considerable. Thus, three and a half miles of walking, through a dense forest, with no view out except an occasional glimpse of the Haystack, the Skylight, or the side of Tahawus, brought us from the lake to the basin of the 'Mount Marcy stream.' The sun was still high in the heavens, and the bark shanties in the 'basin' having fallen in, rendering the construction of new ones imperatively necessary, we concluded to push on and build our camp somewhat nearer the top.

Descending the Bartlett Mountain, we made our first acquaintance with the renowned 'black fly' of the Adirondacs. We had heard so much of this pest, and seen so little of him, that we began to think his existence somewhat mythical, in short, a traveller's tale, invented by men to keep women from venturing beyond the well-beaten track of ordinary journeying. At this, our second halt, however, he assaulted us so vigorously that we were glad to take refuge in the smoke of a smudge our guides had lost no time in making. For the benefit of the uninitiated, we may here explain that a smudge is a fire of leaves or sticks slightly dampened to make a denser smoke, and intended as a safeguard against the attacks of black flies, midges, and mosquitoes, the two latter nuisances appearing in the evening, when the flies have finished their day's work. We saw the creatures, and found them somewhat troublesome (especially when, later in the day, they insisted upon spreading in with bread and butter), but suffered no pain or even inconvenience from their bite. This may have been owing to the lateness of the season, or to the non-inflammatory condition of our blood. Pests they are said to be, and doubtless are; but we think their general prevalence has been exaggerated, and they will be found chiefly beside watercourses, near lakes, and on damp, marshy ground. Fishermen are especially annoyed by them. If we intended to camp out for the mere pleasure of that kind of life, we would choose the season when the flies are supposed to have disappeared; but if we had any special object in view, such as the ascent of some particular mountain, or the sight of any remarkable natural feature of the land, we would not suffer ourselves, at any season, to be deterred by fear of the flies. Certain districts and certain conditions of atmosphere are doubtless especially favorable to their development, but the refuge, a thick smudge, is always at hand, or, if that be objected to, the traveller can try the recipe of an old hunter at the Adirondac Iron Works (where the creatures are said to be particularly rampant), namely, a coating of grease mixed with essence of penny-royal. We fear we would prefer the results of a vigorous attack to the use of this latter safeguard; but no one knows what he may do until he is well tried.

A short distance above the 'basin' we came to a final halt, in a splendid spruce forest, and near a little stream, that necessary accompaniment of a camping ground. It was feared lest the season was so far advanced that the spruce bark would no longer peel; but our tall young aspirant speedily tested the question by a few vigorous, well-directed strokes of his axe, and soon a great circle of bark, six feet high and nine feet in breadth, stood ready for use. Five other pieces, rather less in size, were found sufficient to furnish the sides and roof of our hut, which was made by cutting down two stout young saplings to supply the crotched stakes for the triangular front, and a third, to serve as ridge pole, extending back into the gently sloping bank of dry turf covered with dead spruce leaves. We were a mile and a half from the top of Tahawus, and had entered the great belt of spruce forest encircling the middle regions of the mountain; deciduous trees, with the exception of a few birches, had already been left behind. Round these stakes were arranged the great layers of bark, making a perfectly water-tight cabin, with open doorway, and large enough to give comfortable shelter to as many as four persons. The enclosed space was then covered with soft moss, and a thick layer of spruce twigs laid wrong side up. Over this spicy flooring we spread our gayly-striped blanket, and then sat down within our substantial wigwam to enjoy the blaze and crackle of the bright fire of great logs that had been kindled a few feet from the entrance.

A similar edifice, somewhat less imposing as to size and detail, was then constructed for the use of the guides. These operations employed our three men with their axes the greater part of two hours. Supper was the next matter under consideration, and was deftly prepared by 'Sid,' the aspirant, who proved himself an excellent cook. Our bill of fare consisted of hasty pudding (corn mush), eaten with butter and maple sugar (a dish for a king, and therefore well suited to sundry of the sovereign people, only Elsie and I, having no vote, cannot in any sense be called sovereign), bread and butter, crackers, and toast. Our guides, in addition, ate a slice of raw pork. Diogenes tried it, but pronounced it rather too much like candles to be very palatable south of Labrador or Kamtschatka.

Supper over, the sun had set, and the only work that remained for the twilight was the gathering of the fuel to feed the fires during the coming night.

Daylight faded away, the moon rose, and the gay chat by the fireside being exhausted, a silence, profound, and unbroken save by the crackling flames, fell upon the quiet, gray old forest. By and by the fire died down, and not a single sound could be heard, not the rustle of a bough, the tinkling of the stream, or the stirring of any forest creature. The moon sailed over the treetops, and a ghostly dreaminess lulled every sense, not to sleep, but to languid repose. Fatigue, thus far, there had been none, but physical and mental excitement plenty, and hence the writer's sleep during her first night of camping out lasted about one half hour. She watched the careful guides, how each one rose once during the short night to feed the fires, the elder one alert, the two younger drowsy and but half awake; her mind wandered with Humboldt and Bonpland to South America, with Dr. Kane to the Arctic zone, with Winthrop over the Rocky Mountains, with Dr. Livingstone to Central Africa, and with Father Huc to Tartary and Thibet. The busy, confined life of a city seemed an absurdity, the woods the only rational place for human beings to dwell in, and spruce boughs the only bed suitable to the dignity of mankind.

Morning broke, and with the dawn the guides were up preparing breakfast. Bill of fare: Salt pork, first parboiled to extract the brine, then drained off and fried crisp, bread and butter, toast, crackers, and tea, with maple sugar, but without milk. Our little tin pail served alike to draw water, boil hasty pudding, and make tea. But although the day had dawned and the sun risen, the light was feeble, and the elder guide shook his head ominously.

'Indeed,' said he, 'it won't be much use to go on up, for the Haystack looks so blue that durn'd haze must have come back again, and you'll have no view from Mercy to-day.'

'Well, it can't be helped, but we'll try it anyhow!' was the unanimous response.

We were a mile and a half from the top of Tahawus, having already entered the great belt of spruce encircling the middle regions of the mountain, and having left behind all deciduous trees except a few birches. The forest here is especially grand, the original wood still remaining, tall, wide of girth, dark, and sturdy. The girdled trees standing near our camp looked at us reproachfully in the morning light; ten giants doomed to death to furnish a night's covering to six pigmies! Our fires, too, were they safe, or might they not run along the inflammable turf and perhaps destroy acres of beautiful, precious timber?

But time pressed, 'the dishes were washed,' and we must away. All the heavy articles were left in the camp, and nothing taken up with us except a light lunch, a canteen of water, and the shawls needed to protect against the winds on the top. The little stream crossed, the ascent began quite steeply. A half mile of walking brought us out of the wood, and to the foot of the great slide, a bare, sloping rock, some thousand feet in height. Up this slide, either on the rock, or beside it, through the bushes and the spruce trees, which soon become low and shrubby, leads the pathway, not difficult, but somewhat fatiguing, from its steepness. Indeed, the whole way up is so excellent one wonders so high a mountain can be ascended with so little exertion or actual climbing. In places, the moss is some, six inches thick, and the feet, worn with stony ways, sink into it as if there to find lasting repose; but Excelsior is the cry, and the top of the slide the next goal to be won.

Meantime the haze had been turning into mist, and great clouds were gathering on the bare, rocky head of the mountain. The slide passed, the path winds through dense, low spruce growth, and, the last steep cliffs gradually overcome, the extreme limit of tree vegetation (four thousand eight hundred feet) is passed, and the remaining rocky slope offers no growth except a few hardy plants, such as sandwort, grasses, and several varieties of moss and lichen.

The summit is broad, and, although in part composed of broken rocks, is quite compact in structure. Its general form is rounded and dome-like.

But the view?

Here we were among the clouds, the wind blowing freshly, and the mists sweeping past, obscuring every object below. In this wind lay our hope, and scarcely less in the mists, for they might be the means of dispersing the haze. There went a rift, a patch of blue sky—and there a bit of green mountain! Then again all was leaden, damp, and cold. We seemed to have reached the Ultima Thule, to be the sole living creatures in some far-away corner of an earth gone back to chaos and mysterious twilight. Again a break, and again appeared a stretch of dark fir-covered mountain tops, an avalanche-riven peak, a bright, green field, or a corner of some far-away blue water. This hide-and-go-seek between landscape and mist lasted some half hour, when the clouds all rolled away, and left us with bright sunlight and the most glorious view our eyes had ever rested upon. The extreme distance was still hazy, but the nearer wilderness of forest and mountain was wild and grand enough to have satisfied the most fastidious. The elder guide, who had stood some dozen times on the summit, missed the bits of Lake Champlain and some dim outlines of hills and waters that ought to have been visible, but we were quite content with the sharp ridge of the Haystack and its deep chasm, the bold and beautiful lines of the Gothic Mountains, the stern, scarred face of Moriah, the distant, still cloud-capped Dix's Peak, the pleasant valley of the Au Sable, the Camel's Hump, the Schroon Mountains, the Boreas Waters, Mud and Clear Ponds, the hills about Lake George, Mounts Seward and Sandanona, Lake Sanford, Mounts McIntire, McMartin, Golden, Whiteface, Bennet's Pond, the plains of North Elba, the Skylight, with its singular rock whence is derived its name, and an infinity of peaks of every possible form, all gathered about us as doing homage to the stately monarch, the comely and benignant giant, Tahawus.

The sun was warm, and, sheltered by a rock to screen us from the west wind, we found a single shawl all-sufficient covering. Diogenes produced from his capacious pocket sundry lemons, which, added to some maple sugar, a block of chocolate, and a few crackers, furnished a delightful repast. We had reached the top of the mountain about nine o'clock. By eleven the clouds again began to thicken, and grew so dark upon their under edges that we feared rain. McIntire had collected a murky company that threatened with the rumble of heavenly artillery. Wishing to descend the slide before a coming rain should render it slippery, we took a last look, and hastened away down the rocky slope, through the shrubby spruces, to the top of the slide, where great stones, flung down the bare, sloping rock, bounded and rebounded until they plashed into the marshy pool, one thousand feet below.

Stopping only long enough at our camp to gather up our 'traps,' and to inscribe its name, 'Tahawus,' with a tiny sketch from Elsie, and a chess problem from E. B. C., upon the 'barked' side of a spruce, we hurried down to the 'Mount Marcy stream,' over the Bartlett Mountain, on to the Upper Pond. The thunder rumbled all around us, and we had several light showers. Just as we reached the lake, the storm burst in all its fury. By the aid of our shawls and umbrellas we managed to keep dry until a lull came and we could row to the bark shanties, where we purposed passing the night. It was only half past three, and we might have returned to the 'Flats' that evening, but we did not care to walk through the wet woods in the rain, and, besides, desired a still further acquaintance with the beautiful Upper Pond.

The three bark huts on the shore of the lake had been recently erected and used by a hunting and fishing party. They proved perfectly water tight, and a bright fire of green logs soon dried all dampness out of our garments. Our supper that night was quite elaborate, both pork and hasty pudding entering into its composition. The rain continued to descend, and pattered softly as we disposed ourselves to rest.

That repose was sweet and unbroken, save by a characteristic 'Te-he-he,' and 'Good morning, good morning!' uttered in the high but feeble voice of the elder guide as he came to mend the decaying fire. A reference to our watches showed the hour to be but one past midnight. It must have been a profound yearning for human sympathy that had induced our courteous and considerate guide thus to awaken us. Sleep, however, soon again took up her broken threads, and so firmly reknit their ravelled edges, that the web needed the morning dew and the approaching glories of a brilliant sunrise once more to break and give freedom to the prisoned senses.

Our pioneer, who loved every peak and pond in the neighborhood with the affection of a discoverer, took advantage of the charming morning to row us all round the lake, to show us the pretty inlet with its beaver dam, and help us gather the singular leaves of the pitcher plant, and the beautiful, fragrant white water lilies riding at anchor in the lucent stream.

We soon after took up our line of march for the Lower Pond, where we found 'Uncle David,' with his sturdy wife and pretty, chubby children, awaiting our arrival. Rowing rapidly down the lake, we took our last Mount Marcy lunch beside the outlet, and, early in the afternoon, returned to the Flats. The time devoted to the excursion was thus a little over two and a half days. Going and returning we had driven six miles, rowed four miles (exclusive of our visits to the Upper Pond), and walked somewhat over twenty-one. There had been no fatigue and no difficult climbing. Indeed, it would be no very serious matter to go one day and return the next. And hence we advise all travellers in that region with sound lungs, moderate strength, and any love for forest life and magnificent scenery, to make the ascent. They will assuredly bring home with them a host of pleasant memories, and many new and enchanting pictures for that precious gallery already mentioned.



TIDINGS OF VICTORY.

When David's winning son rebelled, They smote the traitor low, And thought the monarch would rejoice At riddance of his foe.

But in his chamber all alone That kingly head was bowed, And for the erring Absalom His father wept aloud.

The ministers astonished stood At such a burst of grief! The traitor's death alone could bring Their sovereign sure relief.

Back to their tents in sullen gloom The faithful warriors flee; While still he cried, 'My son! my son! Would I had died for thee!'

My country's wilful erring sons, Disloyal men, but brave, Such tears of anguish now she sheds Above the traitor's grave!

Amid the pealing notes of joy For glorious victory won, Is heard Columbia's piercing cry, 'O Absalom, my son!'

Ye faithful men whose crimson blood In her defence is shed, Upbraid her not if thus she weep Above the guilty dead!

Her noble heart is true to you, But generous as brave, She mourns in royal grief apart For those she could not save.



THE ESTHETICS OF THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

It behooves every man, toiling along this dusty roadway of life, to seize upon something which he may study and elaborate, that at the end of his journey he may look back and content himself it has not been utterly in vain to himself and his fellow pilgrims. A man with a mania, or, as the Greeks have it, a man with a madness, is the true world-advancer. This madness, when cultured, ripens into talent; if original and inborn, we call it genius, and the subtile anatomists of the French schools prove it by telling us that the brains of geniuses are diseased. The healthy oyster ministers only to the palate. It is the diseased oyster that secretes the pearl for Miss Shoddy's necklace. It is the diseased brain that shines through the ages, lights men on to new epochs in knowledge, and advances the race to the millennial perfection. Immortal Jean Paul, picturing himself in Schoppe, knew this. For what is all of Schoppe's eloquent and matchless buffoonery, compared with his wise oracles, in the mad conflicts with his other 'I,' whom he saw in the mirror of his diseased brain?

Therefore, let every man have his madness, to which he may give his leisure and his thoughtful hours. Let it grow upon him, until it becomes a strong, controlling, natural element, as Mozart grew into music and Haydon into painting, and is ingrained into his very habit and method of life; for it is only thus and then he becomes a master, fitted to lead the van in the world's march. Only, let it be a praise-worthy madness, and one the development of which wilt secure for himself some new fund of knowledge, and add to the store of his fellow men.

It was somewhat in this vein I looked upon a dingy skilling species, with its rudely crossed hammers—a rough coin, bold, sturdy, and rigid as the old Norse character itself which formed the initial of my cabinet—a cabinet which has given to me new ideas of the low-browed Roman and elegant Greek; has admitted me to the arcana of their fascinating mythology; has whispered strange tales of a mummy's perfumed sleep in the shadow of the awful, eternal Sphynx; has taken me to the fall of Grenada, and, bridging over the dark lapse of the ages, has emerged with the resurrection of art into the bloody days of early English history—the grim Puritanic times, when good old John Hull, the mintmaster, regulated the finances of the colonies, and filled his own pockets with pine-tree shillings and sixpences; the horrors of Danton and Marat; marking faithfully each historic change from orient to Occident, and culminating in that latest triumph of the engraver's cunning skill—the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair medal, commemorating for our children and children's children the magnificent benefactions of the people and the self-devotion of the Commissions—Christian and Sanitary—the angels of mercy and charity, scattering blessings in the furrows of war.

The utile and the dulce of the study of numismatics are shown in many ways. Caraccio, Aretine, and Raphael studied the figures on the old oboli and drachmas. So did Le Brun. Rubens was the most conscientious coin and medal gatherer of his time, and applied them sedulously to the furtherance of his divine gifts. Petrarch found time between his sonnets to Laura to make the first classified collection on record, which he presented to the emperor of Germany, with his well-known and remarkable letter. Alphonso, king of Naples, visited all parts of Europe gathering coins in an ivory casket. The splendid Cosmo de' Medici commenced a cabinet which formed the nucleus of the Florentine collection. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, made a cabinet, and Francis I. of France laid the foundation of the Paris collection—the finest in the world. All artists recognize the value of coins, medals, and medallions. From them they get the model faces and heads of the Greek and Roman, the copies of lost statues, the folds of the chlamys and the graceful sweep of the toga, the eagles and ensigns, rams and trophies, the altars, idols, and sacrifices, the Olympian games, and the instruments of music, mathematics, and mechanics. They reveal the secrets of a thousand antiquated names and ceremonies, which but for the engraver's chronicle must have been utterly lost.

Coins throw additional light upon history. They illuminate the dark passages, clear away the obscurities, and bridge over the gaps. Hugo, in 'Les Miserables,' says men solidified their ideas in architecture before the printed page came from the brain of Faust. He might have added, they wrote their histories upon these bits of gold, silver, iron, brass, and bronze. Vaillant wrote the chronicles of the kings of Syria from a jar of medals, as Cuvier would build up the mastodon and give you the monster's habits from a tooth or a tibia. The Roman denarii give the best idea of Caesar's well in the forum. The Epidaurian coins with the snake of AEsculapius tell in brief characters how the Roman senate sent an embassy to the great father of medicine to come and heal them of the plague. The migration of the Phocian colony to Asia Minor is succinctly told in the [Greek: phoche], or seal, which followed the early Mayflower stamped upon one of the earliest of the Grecian coins. The late coins of the Grecian series, with the portraits of Alexander, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and others, have lent to the historian a fresh and life-like picture of those stern days, and have been silent but incontrovertible witnesses of the truth of the records which have come down to us. Cymbeline, of Shakspeare, dates back to the Cunobelin of an ancient Saxon coin, struck before Boadicea's time. Who would have known of the Grecian domination in Bactria, long after Alexander's time, but for a casual traveller who found the fact, together with a lost language, upon a series of coins unearthed in that part of Asia? The coins of Alexander fix the capture of Egypt; those of Vespasian, the capture of Judea; and those of Trajan, the capture of Parthia. They were the 'brief chroniclers of the time'—Stantonian bulletins, announcing each fresh conquest.

The coins of the ancient day—for our modern productions can hardly claim the credit—blend artistic grace and beauty. Upon them art made its first and some of its best essays. A cabinet of Grecian and Roman coins is a compact history of art from its inception to its meridian in the culmination of Grecian splendor—and since that time, if we may believe Ruskin, we only approximate, or what is worse, degrade. The gradual decline of art and the decay of the empire are traceable on the Roman series. You may follow the downward steps, until it becomes nearly extinct, to revive, after a period of stagnation, in a new feeling in the quaint but strong and rugged Gothic, the beautiful development of which may be seen in the coinage of modern Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The Farnesian Hercules, the Venus de' Medici, the Apollo Belvidere, and the famous equestrian Marcus Aurelius make their appearance upon the ancient medals. Undoubtedly many of the magnificent designs of Grecian medals in particular are but the types of Protogenes and Apelles, as Houdin's model cast of Washington has been photographed, as it were, upon the Wright medal. The grand Byzantine school of art is nowhere better brought out than on the coins of that period. The details of Constantine's coins are found in the ivory dyptics and those splendidly illuminated Gospel vellums which art-despising monks kneeled upon from the seventh to the tenth century, and which art-loving monks, even in the middle of the nineteenth century, used in the decoration of their monastery halls at Mount Athos.

I come to a phase in the study of numismatics which to many will seem paradoxical—the romance of coins—and pick out here and there a few incidents, which I shall string together, not heeding closely chronological sequence.

One of the saddest pictures in all history is the first mention that is made of money. Sarah was dead, and Abraham was sojourning among strangers in a strange land. He mourned for his wife, and stood up before the sons of Heth, and begged of them to intercede with Ephron, the Hittite, for the cave of Machpelah, as a burial place. Ephron liberally offered him the cave and the field, but the patriarch insisted upon payment; whereupon the Hittite answered: 'My lord, hearken unto me; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? Bury, therefore, thy dead.' Abraham weighed the 'four hundred shekels of silver current (money) with the merchant,' and the field and the trees and the caves were Abraham's, and Sarah was buried. The first use of money is the last, and the cave of Machpelah, typical of the last resting place of all men, is the most important because the most imperative use of money. He that hoards and he that squanders, Croesus and Lazarus, at the end of life, provided they have money enough to purchase their caves of Machpelah, have fortune enough, and more than enough, for they may not carry gold and silver with them through the valley of the Shadow. We buy and sell, we loan and speculate, we hoard our shining wealth as Croesus hoarded the golden sands of Pactolus in the treasury of Delhi, but when we come to the cave of Machpelah, we leave it at the entrance, and go into the darkness unencumbered.

The earliest and standard specimen of Roman coinage was the as, subdivided almost indefinitely, and originally weighing a pound. This ponderous coin subserved a purpose which our penny does to-day. It had upon the obverse the double-headed Janus, and upon the reverse the keel of a ship, rudely done, but answering the requirements of the light, juvenile gambling known as pitching coppers. Capita aut navem, 'Heads or the ship,' the Roman boys cried, as Young America cries now, 'Heads or tails.' It is an eminently conservative custom, and Master Freddy, as he tosses his new bronze cent, may summarily answer paternal reproof by showing that Master Tullius, two thousand years ago, pitched the as his father coined, and, for aught we know, grew to be a wise emperor and a great man.

Judea is represented upon several coins of the time of Titus and Vespasian by the figure of a woman with flowing hair and bared breasts, seated upon the ground in a posture of sorrow and captivity, above her the wide-spreading branches of the palm, and behind her a stalwart Roman soldier in mail, leaning upon his spear. Thus exactly did the Roman engraver follow out upon these coins the language of the Scriptures. The Psalmist describes this posture in the lamentations of the Jews over their captivity. 'By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.' Still more remarkable is it that the prophet, in a passage foretelling this identical captivity, likens Judea to a woman sitting upon the ground wrapped in sorrow.

It is not often that coins have been used as vehicles of wit or for plays upon words, but there are examples upon record. Some of the German coins represent in the legends the years in which they were minted. A coin of Gustavus Adolphus also is an excellent illustration of this practice. The legend is: 'ChrIstVs DVX ergo trIVMphVs.' Take the capitalized letters or numerals from the words, and arrange them in their proper order, and you have 1627, the year in which the coin was struck. Upon a coin of Trio Lucretius, a member of the Lucretia gens, who would have remained unknown to this day but for his coin, a case of punning by means of types occurs. The obverse has the head of Apollo; the reverse, the crescent moon and seven stars, or rather triones—the constellation of the Ursa Major. The sun and moon refer to the family name, while the triones are an allusion to the surname. Pope Urban VIII., with execrable taste and questionable wit, upon repairing certain roads, struck a medal with the legend: Beati qui custodiunt meas vias, 'Blessed are they who keep my ways.' The 'speaking types' of the ancient Grecian coins are very curious. The coinage of Rhodes has a rose for a type, which flower bears the same name as the island. The coins of Side have a pomegranate, in Greek, side ([Greek: side]); Melos, the apple, in Greek, melon ([Greek: melon]); Ancona, in Italy, the elbow, in Greek, ancon ([Greek: agkon]); Cardia, the heart, in Greek, cardia [Greek: kardia].

The coins of Constantine the Great, 306 A.D., will always remain of peculiar interest, as connected with the early history of Christianity. Constantine, after forcing his brother-in-law, Licinius, from his Eastern dominions, built Constantinople, and made Christianity the state religion. The principal emblem upon his coins is the Labarum, or sacred banner, bearing the monogram of Christ—the letters [Greek: Ch] and [Greek: R]—being the initials of [Greek: CHRISTOU], the angles of which are occupied by the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega, in allusion to Christ's declaration in Revelation. A rarer type of Constantine's coins has the monogram, and the legend, In hoc signo vinces. The signum was the vision of a beautiful cross in the heavens, which was presented to the view of Constantine, near Milan, during his march against Maxentius. To this cross he attributed both his victory and conversion. These Christian emblems remained upon the coins of his successors until the reign of Julian the Apostate, who removed them and substituted pagan emblems. Nor do they again appear until the accession of Michael Rhangabe (811-813), when the bust and sometimes the full length of Christ is on the obverse, with the nimbus, and the legend, Jesus Christus nica(tor) rex regnantium. Upon the reverse, the emperor, with a singular degree of boldness, is seated by the side of the Virgin, the two holding aloft the banner of the cross.