it about
seventy feet, were landed upon a table-rock exactly on a level with the
torrent, and at the very point whence it makes its down leap into a bay
of the St. Lawrence, a portion of it being arrested, and turned to the
ignoble use of a wool-carding mill, which abuts on the very edge of the
cataract.

I have no sort of doubt that, had I been brought hither before seeing
Niagara, I should have felt duly impressed by its grandeur, which is
unquestionably of a character sufficiently striking to inspire a much
less sensitive admirer of the sublime in nature; as it was, this fall
only brought fresh to my recollection the scene I had looked upon the
year before, no feature of which can ever be effaced by any other
object.

At this day I can find no adequate language wherein to dress my
impressions of that wonder. Of Montmorency I only know that I felt,
whilst viewing it, as though other doings of Nature might be found every
way fellow to it: that such things, in fact, were existing elsewhere, or
might be.

But Niagara in its greatness makes all else little. It stands,
incomparable and alone, a time-defying monument of creation as first
called from chaos; one feels that the waters of the deluge may have
risen above it and subsided, leaving it unaltered. It is possible to
imagine all other worldly things either changed, or within the scope of
mutation and the power of Time. You feel that with most earthly things
you have a right to speculate, to calculate on their endurance, to
control and to direct them: but never so with old Niagara. Its aspect
awes man into nothing, it mocks at his dreams, and defies alike his
wisdom and his power.

Certain points on this Montmorency road afford, I fancy, the finest view
of Quebec. Two sides of the city are presented, with its close streets,
and bright-roofed buildings, rising irregularly tier over tier, and
crowned by the formidable lines of defence over which the cross of Old
England waves proudly in the breeze. Opposite swells the softer outline
of Point Levi, sprinkled with pretty cottages, and separated from the
mountain by a narrow channel. As a foreground, the smooth bay lies
spread between, and over all bends a sky without a cloud, glowing in the
colour of the early morning sun.

With this scene before us, we rattled back at a merry pace, reaching our
quarters by a little after eight A.M. We found horses here awaiting to
carry us to the Chateau to breakfast, an attention