sun. Owing to the absence of light, I have seen the rainbow only two or
three times by day; the lunar bow not at all. However, the imperial
presence needs not its crown, though illustrated by it.

General Porter and Jack Downing were not unsuitable figures here. The
former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island,
and the Wake-Robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with
deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sank the first
stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining
representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege.
He told us all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to say,
the battles that have been fought here. It seems strange that men could
fight in such a place; but no temple can still the personal griefs and
strifes in the breasts of its visiters.

No less strange is the fact that, in this neighborhood, an eagle should
be chained for a plaything. When a child, I used often to stand at a
window from which I could see an eagle chained in the balcony of a
museum. The people used to poke at it with sticks, and my childish heart
would swell with indignation as I saw their insults, and the mien with
which they were borne by the monarch-bird. Its eye was dull, and its
plumage soiled and shabby, yet, in its form and attitude, all the king
was visible, though sorrowful and dethroned. I never saw another of the
family till, when passing through the Notch of the White Mountains, at
that moment striding before us in all the panoply of sunset, the driver
shouted, "Look there!" and following with our eyes his upward-pointing
finger, we saw, soaring slow in majestic poise above the highest summit,
the bird of Jove. It was a glorious sight, yet I know not that I felt
more on seeing the bird in all its natural freedom and royalty, than
when, imprisoned and insulted, he had filled my early thoughts with the
Byronic "silent rages" of misanthropy.

Now, again, I saw him a captive, and addressed by the vulgar with the
language they seem to find most appropriate to such occasions--that of
thrusts and blows. Silently, his head averted, he ignored their
existence, as Plotinus or Sophocles might that of a modern reviewer.
Probably, he listened to the voice of the cataract, and felt that
congenial powers flowed free, and was consoled, though his own wing was
broken.

The story of the Recluse of Niagara interested me a little. It is
wonderf