Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/209

Rh It makes a grand and joyful impression, but has nothing in it which astonishes or strikes the beholder. As you go toward the great fall, which is on the Canada side, you see a broad mass of water which falls perpendicularly from a plane in a horse-shoe or crescent form. One might say that the water comes from an open embrace. The water calm and clear, and of the most beautiful smaragdus-green colour, arches itself over the precipice that breaks it, and it is then that the fury and wild power of the fall first break forth, but even here rather majestically than furiously. Trenton is a young hero, drunken with youthful life and old sherry, which, in blind audacity, rushes forth on its career, violent and terrible. Niagara is a goddess, calm and majestic even in the exercise of her highest power. She is mighty, but not violent. She is calm, and leaves the spectators so. She has grand, quiet thoughts, and calls forth such in those who are able to understand her. She does not strike with astonishment, but she commands and fascinates by her clear, sublime beauty. One sits by her knee and still can hear one's own thoughts and the words of others, yes, even the falling water-drops from the green trees which her waters have besprinkled. She is too great to wish to silence, to wish to rule, excepting by her spirtual power. She isah, she is what human beings are not, and which, if they were, would make them god-like.

But those many thousand people who come hither every year—it is said that the place is visited by 60,000 persons annually—must they not grow a little greater and better by seeing this greatness, and reflecting themselves in it?—I rejoice that so many people see Niagara in the year.

From the unknown fountains of the St. Lawrence, and from the four great inland lakes, Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, which together are said to hold a fourth