Creation's wonder! How much corn a day
Doth thy sublimity to flour bring?
We wonder what our nation would do with Mont Blanc if they had it? Place an ice-cream freezing establishment on its summit, perhaps; or tunnel it, à la Thames, and settle a Yankee colony within. We shall next expect to hear that Mammoth Cave has been partitioned off into comfortable apartments, to let to small families. Rooms containing stalactites extra charge, as in such cases clothes-pins would be unnecessary.
Imperial Rome folds her mantle grandly around her, and sits in magnificent sadness at the base of her broken statues and fallen temples—Niobe weeping for her children. Young America strides along in broadcloth and beaver, and only sees that the statue might have been a mantle-piece, or the temple a machine-shop. He forgets whence the money-changers and sellers of doves were driven, because they made the Father's house a house of merchandise. He does not see that stars burn brighter than patent oil, or that earth was intended for another purpose than a plantation. He is more eager to manufacture the napkin than to improve the talent within it. His life is practical; his body is practical; his soul is practical. He would make death and eternity practical, if he only knew how to do it.
Oh, Niagara! are the clanking of machinery and the noise of the water-wheel to be thy dirge? Shall a saw-mill be located on Goat Island, or a stove-foundry near Table Rock? Shall thy rainbow span the summit of a comb manufactory, or thy spray fall silvery on a button establishment? Shall we bewail thy beauty and grandeur forever, as we cry, "Niagara has fallen—has fallen into a mill-dam!"
THE SPRING-TIME COMETH.
The Spring-time cometh with her buds and flowers;
But ah, those buds and flowers I ne'er may see!
The Spring-time cometh with her rosy hours,