er, by
reason that it stands up above the fall, and that the current for ever
sets down."

Again I agreed with him, excusing Shakspeare's discrepancies on the
score of his never having had a proper guide to explain these matters.

"I don't know who at all showed him the place," gravely responded Pat;
"but it's my belief he never was in id at all at all, though the
gintleman that tould me a heap more about it swears for sartin that he
was."

This last remark, and the important air with which the doubt was
conveyed, proved too much for my risible faculties, already suffering
some constraint, and I fairly roared out in concert with my companion,
who had been for some time convulsed with laughter.

Whoever first instructed the "Conductor" on this point of critical
history deserves well of the visitors so long as the present subject
remains here to communicate the knowledge; indeed, I trust, before he is
drowned in the Niagara, or burnt up with the whisky required, as he
says, "to keep the could out of the shtomach," the present possessor of
this curiosity in literature will bequeath it to his successor, so that
it may be handed down in its integrity to all future visitors.

Next morning at an early hour I revisited the "Termination Rock," but
excused myself from being accompanied by "the Conductor." I next
wandered down the stream, and had a delightful bathe in it. Accompanied
by a friend, I was pulled in a skiff as close to the fall as possible,
and in short performed duly all the observances that have been suggested
and practised by curiosity or idleness; but in all these I found no
sensation equal to a long quiet contemplation of the mass entire, not as
viewed from the balconies of the hotel, but from some rocky point or
wooded shade, where house and fence and man and all his petty doings
were shut out, and the eye left calmly to gaze upon the awful scene, and
the rapt mind to raise its thoughts to Him who loosed this eternal flood
and guides it harmless as the petty brook.

There never should have been a house permitted within sight of the fall
at least. How I have envied those who first sought Niagara, through the
scarce trod wilderness, with the Indian for a guide; and who slept upon
its banks with the summer trees for their only shelter, with the sound
of its waters for their only _reveille_.

Now, one is awakened here by a bell, which I never can liken to any
other than a dustman's, and can hardly find a spo