for a jew's-harp, when the music ceased with a
sudden clash of the cymbals. But the next moment it burst out with fresh
sweetness, and in alighting they perceived that another omnibus had
turned the corner and was drawing up to the pillared portico of the
hotel. A small family dismounted, and the feet of the last had hardly
touched the pavement when the music again ended as abruptly as those
flourishes of trumpets that usher player-kings upon the stage. Isabel
could not help laughing at this melodious parsimony. "I hope they don't
let on the cataract and shut it off in this frugal style; do they,
Basil?" she asked, and passed jesting through a pomp of unoccupied
porters and tallboys. Apparently there were not many people stopping at
this hotel, or else they were all out looking at the Falls or confined to
their rooms. However, our travellers took in the almost weird emptiness
of the place with their usual gratitude to fortune for all queerness in
life, and followed to the pleasant quarters assigned them. There was time
before supper for a glance at the cataract, and after a brief toilet they
sallied out again upon the holiday street, with its parade of gay little
shops, and thence passed into the grove beside the Falls, enjoying at
every instant their feeling of arrival at a sublime destination.

In this sense Niagara deserves almost to rank with Rome, the metropolis
of history and religion; with Venice, the chief city of sentiment and
fantasy. In either you are at once made at home by a perception of its
greatness, in which there is no quality of aggression, as there always
seems to be in minor places as well as in minor men, and you gratefully
accept its sublimity as a fact in no way contrasting with your own
insignificance.

Our friends were beset of course by many carriage-drivers, whom they
repelled with the kindly firmness of experienced travel. Isabel even felt
a compassion for these poor fellows who had seen Niagara so much as to
have forgotten that the first time one must see it alone or only with the
next of friendship. She was voluble in her pity of Basil that it was not
as new to him as to her, till between the trees they saw a white cloud of
spray, shot through and through with sunset, rising, rising, and she felt
her voice softly and steadily beaten down by the diapason of the
cataract.

I am not sure but the first emotion on viewing Niagara is that of
familiarity. Ever after, its strangeness increases;