The smile, the tear; The tear,-the smile; What more? Come, Memory, tell; or, is our musing o'er, Our converse done? Has Time been toiling to uprear With Smile or Tear unwritten on the stone; Yea, even none. The tear, the smile; The smile, the tear; -no more; Of years gone by Such is life's sum and substance; all the love Is writ in such laconic style, The mighty ages as they fly; Weep oceans, shake the world with laughter's cry, Then sink and die. The smile, the tear! Is such a history mine? Yes, or I were not man. These twain combine Life's tale to write, E'en my life's tale. Now grief is here; Now sunny joy; now gloomy night And darkness reign; now sheds the sun his light, And all is bright. The tear,-the smile! All-gracious Father, praise ; Praise to Thy name, that Thou hast marked my days With tears so few, And smiles so many! For a while I pause, and calling up to view Joys of the past, Thy praises I renew Hearty and true. The smile, the tear; The tear, the smile! My life! Such is thy history past. But when the strife Of earth is o'er, What then? To Him I would be near From smile-clad lips His praises forth I'd pour For evermore. WONDERFUL WATERFALLS. FALLS OF NIAGARA. THE waterfall is rather of the beautiful than the wonderful. Its elements, such as towering rocks, deep gorges, green valleys, and the sheets of foam which the descending flood produces, are all things rather of beauty than wonder, and as materials in the landscape, eminently, picturesque. There are some few waterfalls, however, which, from the mass of descending water, the breadth and depth of the current, or the height and rapidity of the fall itself, deserve to be classed in the catalogue of the wonderful. First in the list of wonderful waterfalls is that of Niagara, renowned all over the world for its majesty, its magnitude and its power, and described by travellers as the sublimest object on earth. The ocean is often more varied in its grandeur, the giant mountains of the Andes and Himalaya more imposing in their solitude, but no single spectacle is at once so striking and wonderful as the descent of the sea-like flood, the overplus of four extensive American lakes. From Lake Erie to Lake Ontario the river Niagara has a course of about thirty-three miles; and at the fall the width of the river is three-quarters of a mile. The fall itself is divided into two unequal portions by the intervention of a small patch of rock, called Goat Island, which presents a facade 1000 feet in breadth; thus in a strict sense there are two falls; the one on the British side of the river, called from its shape, the Horseshoe Fall, is about 2100 feet broad, and 149 feet 9 inches high. The other, or American Fall, is 1140 feet broad and 864 feet high. The British, or Horse-shoe Fall, is superior in grandeur to the other: the water passing over with such rapidity that it forms a curved sheet which strikes the stream below at the distance of fifty feet from the base, and some travellers have ventured between the descending flood and the rock itself. The quantity of water rolling over these falls is estimated at 670,250 tons per minute. Captain Basil Hall compares the sound of its waters to the ceaseless, rumbling, deep monotonous sounds of a vast mill. Dr. Read says, "It is not like thunder, nor like the sea, nor like anything he had anywhere else heard. There is no roar, no rattle, nothing sharp or angry in its tones: it is deep, awful, One." A visit to the falls, Mr. A. N. Gould, thus describes-"My attention had been kept alive, and I was all awake to the sound of the cataract; but though within a few miles, I heard nothing. A cloud hanging steadily over the forest, was pointed out to me as the spray clouds'; at length we drove up to Forsyth's Hotel, and the mighty Niagara came in full view. My first impression was that of disappointment, * * ** but while I mused, I began to take in the grandeur of the ་ scene. The fact is, that the first view of Niagara is a bad one: and the eye, in this situation, can comprehend but a small part of the wonderful scene; you look down upon the cataract, instead of up to it; the confined channel, and the depth of it, prevent the astounding roar which was anticipated, and at the same time, the eye wanders midway between the water and the cloud formed by the spray, which it sees not. After a quarter of an hour's gaze, I felt a kind of fascination-a desire to find myself gliding into eternity in the centre of the grand fall, over which the bright green water appears to glide like oil, without the least commotion. I approached nearly to the edge of the 'Table Rock,' and looked down into the abyss. A lady from Devonshire had just returned from the spot. I was informed she had approached its very edge, and sat with her feet over the edge,-an awful and dangerous proceeding. Having viewed the spot, and made myself acquainted with some of its localities, I returned to the hotel, which is admirably situate for the view; from my chamber window I looked directly upon it, and the first night I could find but little sleep from the noise. Every view I took increased my admiration; and I began to think that the other falls I had seen were, in comparison, like runs from kettle spouts on hot plates. I remained in this interesting neighbourhood for five days, and saw the fall from almost every point of view. From its extent and the angular line it forms, the eye cannot embrace it all at once: and, probably, from this cause it is that no drawing has ever yet done justice to it. The grandest view, in my opinion, is at the bottom, and close to it on the British side, where it is awful to look up through the spray at the immense body as it comes pouring over, deafening you with its roar; the lighterspray, at a considerable distance, hangs poised in the air like an eternal cloud. The next best view is on the American side, to reach which you cross in a crazy ferry boat: the passage is safe enough but the current is strongly agitated. Its depth, as near to the falls as can be approached, is from 180 to 200 feet. The water, as it passes over the rock, where it is not whip 1 ped into foam, is a most beautiful sea-green, and it is the same at the bottom of the falls. The foam, which floats away in large bodies, feels and looks like salt water after a storm it has a strong fishy smell. The river, at the ferry, is 1170 feet wide. There is a great quantity of fish, particularly sturgeon and bass, as well as eels; the latter crept up against the rock under the falls, as if desirous of finding some mode of surmounting the heights. Some of the visitors go under the falls, an undertaking more curious than pleasant. It is described as like being under a heavy shower-bath, with a tremendous whirlwind driving your breath from you, and causing a peculiarly unpleasant sensation at the chest; the footing over the débris being slippery, the darkness barely visible, and the roar almost deafening. In the passage you kick against eels, many of them unwilling to move, even when touched: they appear to be endeavouring to work their way up the streams. A dislocation of the rocks, which occurred in 1818, caused by the cutting away of the foundation by the erosive action of the water, has increased the difficulty of entering the chasm under the fall. In 1828 a similar rupture took place, and obstructed the passage still more. In spite of the real hazard so produced several visitors of late years have made the attempt, and none with more success than Miss Martineau, who describes the undertaking in her work on America. She says, "A hurricane blows up from the cauldron; a deluge drives at you from all parts; and the noise of both wind and waters, reverberated from the cavern, is inconceivable. Our path was sometimes a wet ledge of rock, first broad enough to allow one person at a time to creep along; in other places we walked over heaps of fragments both slippery and unstable. If all had been dry and quiet, I might have thought this path above the boiling basin dangerous, and have trembled to pass it; but amidst the hubbub of gusts and floods, it appeared so firm a footing that I had no fear of slipping into the cauldron. For the moment I perceived we were actually behind the cataract, and not in a mere |