Beautiful Evening Scene.—Commencement of Burgoyne's Retreat toward Saratoga.—His Retreat anticipated by Gates.
It was, indeed, a charming scene, enhanced by the associations of the vicinity. The face of nature was washed clean by the drenching showers; the trees and shrubs were brilliant green; and from the clustering knolls or loftier hills beyond the Hudson, once bristling with bayonets or wreathed by the smoke of cannon, the evening sunlight was reflected back by the myriad rain-drops lying upon trees, and grass, and blooming corn. Nor was this all. Upon the dark background of the hills was Iris,
"That beautiful one,
Whose arch is refraction, whose keystone the sun;
In the hues of its grandeur sublimely it stood
O'er the river, the village, the field, and the wood."
Charles Swain.
Springing from the plain, its double arch spanned the whole ground where British pride was humbled and American valor acknowledged. I never gazed upon the "bow of promise" with so much interest, for thought unconsciously bridged over the chasm of seventy buried years, and it seemed for a moment as if the dark hours of our rebellious conflict had returned, and that in the covenant seal before me the eye of hope read prophetically the history of the happy present. As the sun went down and the bow faded, the Spirit of Beauty left traces of its pencil on my thoughts, and I felt, with "Amelia," that
"There are moments, bright moments, when the spirit receives