PICTURED ROCKS.

On the southern shore of Lake Superior, is a series of rocks, rising perpendicularly out of the water, to the height, in some places, of three hundred feet. They commence about an hundred miles west of Point aux Pins, and form the shore of the lake for a distance of twelve or thirteen miles. The rocks are limestone, and the action of the waves has worn them into the most grotesque forms, which suggested the appropriate name of Pictured Rocks. The following interesting description of them is given by Governor Cass.

"It requires little aid from the imagination to discover in them the castellated tower, the lofty dome, spires, and pinnacles, of the most sublime, grotesque, and fantastical shapes, which the genius of architecture has ever invented. These

cliffs are one unbroken mass of rocks, rising to an elevation of three hundred feet above the level of the coast for fifteen miles. The voyagers never pass this coast except in the most profound calm; and the Indians, before they make the attempt, offer their accustomed oblations to propitiate the favour of Manito. The eye instinctively searches along this eternal rampart for a single place of security, but the search is in vain. With an impassable barrier of rock on one side, and, to the eye, an interminable expanse of water on the other, a sudden storm upon the lake would as inevitably insure destruction to the passenger in the frail canoe, as if he were on the brink of the cataract of Niagara. The rock is disintegrated by the continual action of the water, with comparative facility. There are no broken masses upon which the eye can rest and find relief. The lake is so deep that these masses, as they are torn from the precipice, are concealed beneath its waters, until they are reduced to sand. The action of the waves has undermined every projecting point, and there the immense precipice rests upon arches, and the foundation is intersected by caverns, extending in every direction. When we

passed this mighty fabric of nature, the wind was still, and the lake calm. But even the slightest motion of the waves, which in the most profound calm agitates these internal seas, swept through the deep caverns with the noise of distant thunder, and died upon the ear, as it rolled forward in the dark recesses inaccessible to human observation. No sound more melancholy or more awful ever vibrated upon human nerves. It has left an impression which neither time nor distance can efface. Resting in the frail bark canoe upon the limpid waters of the lake, we seemed almost suspended in the air, so pellucid is the element upon which we floated. In gazing upon the towering battlements which impended over us, we felt, and felt intensely, our own insignificance. No situation can be imagined more humbling to the pride of man. We appeared like a speck upon the face of creation. Our whole party, Indians, voyagers, soldiers, officers, and servants, contemplated, in mute astonishment, the awful display of Creative Power at whose base we hung; and no sound broke upon the ear to interrupt the ceaseless roaring of the waters. No splendid cathedral, no temple built with human hands, no

pomp of worship could ever impress the spectator with such deep humility, and so strong a conviction of the immense distanee between him and the Almighty Architect. The writer of this article has viewed the Falls of Niagara, and the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge,' two of the most stupendous objects in the natural features of our country; the impression they produce is feeble and transient, when compared with the Pictured Rocks' of Lake Superior."

JOHN WOOLMAN.

HAST thou ever, gentle reader, chanced to meet with the history of John Woolman? If thou hast not, then go, I pray thee, to the library of some ancient Quaker of thy acquaintance, and borrow it. But do not read it then; not, at least, if the "Wept of the Wish-ton-wish," with half its leaves still uncut, is lying upon thy table; or if thou hast only just peeped between the pages of one of the annuals; but when thou art weary of all these things; when thou sittest among thy "pleasant company of books" listless and discontented; when thy heart turns sick with the long details of human crime and misery, written within the volumes of history; when biography serves but to humble thee with the knowledge that the best have been so frail, and the wisest so ignorant; when philosophy, which has led thee with a proud wing among the secret