isitors.

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 glowing 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
wonderful that men do not oftener attach their lives to localities
of great beauty,--that, when once deeply penetrated, they will let
themselves so easily be borne away by the general stream of things,
to live anywhere and anyhow. But there is something ludicrous in being
the hermit of a show-place, unlike St. Francis in his mountain-bed,
where none but the stars and rising sun ever saw him.

There is also a "guide to the falls," who wears his title labelled on
his hat; otherwise, indeed, one might as soon think of asking for a
gentleman usher to point out the moon. Yet why should we wonder at
such, when we have Commentaries on Shakespeare, and Harmonies of the
Gospels?

And now you have the little all I have to write. Can it interest you?
To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what
thoughts can be recorded about it seem