Schaffhausen, and Handel, and Terni, and the Clyde never wear those crystal robes and trimmings which deck, bridally, the bass-toned pipes of our great organ of Erie. The gush and the flow of sparkling water are all that lend grandeur or beauty to the great cataracts of Europe. And if summertime do not steep them in warm mists that catch the sunshine in "bounteous colors three," the autumn only hangs heavy and cold—spitting catarrhal spray, and no winter is keen enough to set the edge of the torrents in sharpened icicles, and to sheet the near-lying wood with silver.
But Niagara—in such winter as has hung its lengthened pall upon our hoping hearts—dresses itself bridally; the rocks, loosened from the base, are sheathed in pearly casements, that rise with every morning's light, and comb over right and left, and climb in the very eye of the waters—breasting the spray, that clings ever, with new-added pearls, and cumulates into a mounded miracle of beauty.
The near trees, too, catch the dampened air, day after day, and wear it in fleecy vestments, that bow them down, till their limbs touch the icy ground, and the visitor roams in fairy bowers of ice, and looks upon the spanning bow from the interstices of a crystal forest. Far away along shore the dripping boughs wear silvery coats, and glisten in the January sun, like trees of glass. The eddies below whirl crashing fragments, that come over the sounding precipice, like atoms playing in the sunbeams; the foam plays round the ice-cakes, like whipt cream around transparent jellies; and the blue of the unfathomed depths gleams to the light, like a sky, relieving the sparkle of a starry "milky way."
Beyond this, streaming from bank to bank, like the gossamer web, which a dewy morning of June shows—stretching from grass-tip to grass-tip—the wire bridge spans the fretted chasm, and shakes, as summer webs shake, in the growing breath of a summer's day.
Nor is foliage wanting; for firs, green as those of Norway, lie black against the carpeting snows, and black against the light clouds that the spray drifts along the wintry sky. And from amid the iciness, and the clearness, and the silvered woods the roar raises its organ-notes, pealing through the ice-haunted boughs, and dying upon the stillness of winter!
But we are forgetting ourselves and our season. The violets are up and fragrant; the butter-cups are lying golden upon the hills, where we may not go; and the sweet haze of summer is stretching toward us from the country its alluring spell. Happy the man who can cast off the city dust, and loiter by pleasant streams with books of old rhyme, or with rod and angle! A murrain on those who laugh at such enjoyment as this; and who cluster their withered comforts, from year's end to year's end, within the close-pent alleys of our city!
And this mood of speech, into which the soft sun slanting upon our window has decoyed us easily, tempts us to lift a pleading voice, once more, for that park and wood, which seems to drift before our scheming lawgivers like a good thing—never to be caught. If only, when this Easy-Chair-writing were done, we could wear the hope of a stroll under trees, where country silence reigned, and where wayside flowers lifted their mild eyes, to wean us from the perplexities of toil, with what richer relish would we not pursue our task; and with what heartier prayer would we not thank God for our daily walk—as for our "daily bread!"
Look to it, you scheming rulers of our city, that you do not worry tender-heartedness into city hardness, and cramp, by your misplaced economy, the better instincts of our nature, into that careless and wiry spirit, which acts without love, and which works without feeling.
That charity which honors wealth can find no better play than in spreading before the eyes, and the weakened feet of the poor, those paths of greenness, which bless with Heaven's own refreshment.