little to say where the spectacle is, for once,
great enough to fill the whole life, and supersede thought, giving us
only its own presence. "It is good to be here," is the best as the
simplest expression that occurs to the mind.

We have been here eight days, and I am quite willing to go away. So
great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with
what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again
less readily. Having "lived one day" we would depart, and become worthy
to live another.

We have not been fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or
too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with
cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere,
do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there
is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms
and motions come and go, the tide rises and recedes, the wind, at its
mightiest, moves in gales and gusts, but here is really an incessant, an
indefatigable motion. Awake or asleep, there is no escape, still this
rushing round you and through you. It is in this way I have most felt
the grandeur--somewhat eternal, if not infinite.

At times a secondary music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own
rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a
double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the
thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual
repetition through all the spheres.

When I first came I felt nothing but a quiet satisfaction. I found that
drawings, the panorama, &c. had given me a clear notion of the position
and proportions of all objects here; I knew where to look for
everything, and everything looked as I thought it would.

Long ago, I was looking from a hill-side with a friend at one of the
finest sunsets that ever enriched this world. A little cow-boy, trudging
along, wondered what we could be gazing at. After spying about some
time, he found it could only be the sunset, and looking, too, a moment,
he said approvingly "that sun looks well enough;" a speech worthy of
Shakspeare's Cloten, or the infant Mercury, up to everything from the
cradle, as you please to take it.

Even such a familiarity, worthy of Jonathan, our national hero, in a
prince's palace, or "stumping" as he boasts to have done, "up the
Vatican stairs, into the Pope's presence, in my old boo