THE SCENERY OF AMERICA.1 NOTWITHSTANDING that steam, the comparative annihilator of time and space, offers every inducement and facility for travellers to explore other regions than those usually selected by Europeans in general, but especially by Englishmen, America has not yet become a favourite resort with us. A month or so consumed in going thither and returning is a long time for one to be so occupied who can perhaps afford but a very few weeks during the year away from his profession or his business; and even when a man has little else to do but play the idler and "take his ease at his inn," a voyage across the blue waters of the Atlantic, with its disquietudes and possible dangers, is sufficient to deter him from attempting the passage: the remark applies generally, yet there are some exceptions, from whom, as well as from American writers themselves, we have learned all that we know of the physical and geographical phenomena of the country, and of the rapid strides it is making in the great march of human civilization. And how vast and wonderful has her march been! | -how almost instantaneous, as if touched by a magician's wand, has been her transformation from a wilderness to a fruitful field! It is but yesterday, measuring time from the first dawnings of creation, that her mountains were solitary places, her interminable forests echoed only the roar of savage beasts and the more welcome sound of singing birds, and her plains were trodden by the foot of the wild red man: her rivers flowed on, century after century, yet conveyed to the inhabitants of the western world no tidings that there existed another hemisphere, richer in natural wealth, and scarcely less extensive than their own. How startling, then, must have been the intelligence that reached Europe of the discovery of America! It would almost seem as if this continent had been purposely intended by Providence to remain hidden till the necessities of the Old World required a new and a wider field for the operations of the great family of mankind, which had grown too large for the restless and expansive spirit of its various members. There then was "ample room, and verge enough," for it to expatiate; a prize for the ambitious, a path for the gold-lover to wander in, a theme for the speculations of the philosopher, and a page, fresh from the hands of its Divine Author, for him who seeks after knowledge. And thither each and all of these respective classes hastened in process of time, many of them bringing back, like the spies sent out into Canaan, "goodly fruits of the land," as incentives to future adventurers; others remained there to possess themselves of its treasures, and abiding by them, handed down the inheritance to their children's children. Whatever disinclination an Englishman may feel towards the political institutions and some of the habits and customs of the Americans, he must glory in having given to them a language, thoughts, and "The Home Book of the Picturesque." Published by (1) G. P. Putnam, New York. aspirations, akin to his own. The blood of the Saxon circulates almost wherever human foot has trodden; his voice is heard giving laws and inculcating religion over vast tracts of the inhabited earth; and from his loins are springing up great and powerful nations, destined hereafter to hold the reins of unbounded empire, when those now existing shall be known only through their past histories. With all their nationality, the Americans feel, and are justly proud of this. They look back and associate themselves with the glories England has won in art, science, literature, and philanthropy; and they look forward to what our and their own future success may be in the promotion of universal happiness. Our task now, however, refers less to the social condition of the western hemisphere, than to its present aspect, as built by the great Architect of the universe, and as the transforming hand of man has made it. The book of nature is a volume none can profitably study who have not feelings in harmony with the subject; the faculty of perception and the sense of enjoyment are essential to a full comprehension of its beauties. Education of the mind and of the heart, if not of the vision, is also necessary to a right understanding of what it places before us. The peasant returning homewards from his daily toil, may, not unreasonably, fancy he "Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind;" for the whispers of the one and the far-off beauty of the other are audible and thought-giving things, capable of making themselves heard and felt. But his mind has not been tutored to linger over the less exciting objects of creation: the seasons roll on unnoticed, except as they vary his round of occupation; his eye wanders over the broad expanse of meadow, yet he sees not how one blade of grass differs from another blade in symmetry of form and in delicacy of texture; he looks upon the woods skirting the yellow cornfields, whose ripe sheaves are gathered beneath his sickle, but his soul cannot penetrate into their recesses and draw forth happiness from their shadowy depths; nor does the gurgling of the brook, over which he treads on that solitary plank, allure him to contemplation by the ripple of its shallow waters. Mind and feeling must be brought to bear upon the visible works of the Deity, ere that voice can be understood which speaks of their grandeur and their glory. Burns listened to it when he "followed the plough upon the mountain side," and Bloomfield, as he kept watch o'er the sheep-fold, and they answered it in their songs of joy; ay, and hundreds beside these, to whom the gift of words has not been afforded, echo in the silence of the heart the music of their minstrelsy. There is a natural science which neither schools nor systems can teach, but the number is small to whom it is revealed. All great minds untainted by the world's ambition have revelled in the charms and majesty of nature; of terror to their fellow-men, have been awed into a while even they whose very names were watchwords spirit of meekness by the overwhelming power of the prevailing tone from the peculiar scenery that most physical universe; and others engrossed, abounds. "First, in the kingdoms of matter around us, what is most abundant in amount, is most ennobling in use. The mighty magician, Nature, produces the greatest variety of striking effects with the fewest means. There is only a sun, soil, rocks, trees, flowers, water, upon this last, whether to the contemplator 'love lends and an observing soul. Every thing in use depends a precious seeing to the eye.' Deep in the concave of heaven is the luminary revealing all; and deep in the soul of the illumined is a chord tenderly vibrating to things, the silvery tones of flowing streams, the tremthe charms of all. The voices of every order of moving bling tongues of leaves, the inarticulate melody of flowers, the vibrations of mighty hills, and the dread music of the spheres, all sublunary blending with all celestial notes, are not for a moment lost to the heart that listens. The harp of Memnon is not fabulous, properly interpreted. The devout lover of nature, "From morn to eve, from eve to dewy morn," by the din and turmoil of life, not unfrequently rejoice to exchange its pomps and its frettings for the haunts of the turtle-dove, not as dull anchorites, disgusted with the world's follies, but as living men, who would, for a time, hold other and more holy communion. It is a privilege allowed by God to man, when he is permitted to escape from the burdens that weigh down both mind and body, into the sanctuary erected by the hands of Deity himself. "Nature," says Sydney Smith, "speaks to the mind of man immediately in beautiful and sublime language; she astonishes him with magnitude, appals him with darkness, cheers him with splendour, soothes him with harmony, cap-seated on the mountain, or by the occan, bathed in the tivates him with emotion, enchants him with fame; she never intended man should walk among her flowers, and her fields, and along her streams unmoved; nor did she rear the strength of her hills in vain, or mean that we should look with a stupid heart on the wild glory of the torrent, bursting from the darkness of the forest, and dashing over the crumbling rock. I would as soon deny hardness, or softness, or figure, to be qualities of matter, as I would deny beauty or sublimity to belong to its qualities." It is the triumph of matter over mind, when the beauty or the sublimity of nature brings our wayward thoughts into subjection. Pictures are mute teachers, and however great has been the skill of the artist in portraying the varied scenery of the universe, we feel that his works are, after all, nought but painted deceptions; while the world around is a living eloquent reality. We weary of the former; for if it represent a noonday scene, one would not always dwell in perpetual sunshine; and if the locality be pictured in the soft rays of twilight, we long to see it in the brightness of day. But the landscape over which the clouds roll with ever varied motion, changing form and colour with each breath that blows,-alternating light and shadow as they move onward,-never tires, simply because it is always new, always infinite in its peculiarities. The superiority of nature over art, as a source of mental pleasure and profit, cannot be questioned; but we welcome the latter with gladness, when the former is beyond our reach; and thus the elegant volume which has given rise to the foregoing observations comes, with its delicately executed vignettes of American scenery, a most agreeable and pleasant visitor from the distant continent to our sea-girt isle. In an introductory essay to the book entitled "Scenery and Mind," written by E. L. Magoon with much descriptive power and philosophical reflection, we find the following remarks on the effects which striking scenery produces on the mind. "We proceed to show that, in the physical universe, what is most abundant, is most ennobling-what is most exalted, is most influential on the best minds; and that, for these reasons, national intellect receives a golden sheen of opening day, will have his soul often We must, however, record our dissent from the concluding observation in this extract, which, as it is placed between inverted commas, we presume not to be Mr. Magoon's; for, not even allowing the licence of poetical allusion, can we admit that any "music" swelling upwards from earth, "Save the soft notes of charity and love," can "charm the ear of God." It might have done so when the universe stood in its purity as He first created it; but the primeval curse is yet upon the ground, and its echoes are flung back from hill and torrent, telling of man's disobedience and his fall. The magnificence of Nature! How truly does this term apply to the scenery of America! We speak of the picturesque beauty of our own favoured land; of the elegance, if such an expression may be permitted, of classic Italy and Greece; of the Alpine grandeur of Switzerland, and of the savage gloominess of the North: but in America all is grand, colossal, and sublime. It would seem that since the first dawning of time her rivers had not ceased to widen their banks, and her mountains to grow, and the trees of her forests to rise higher and higher; in no other country are we so awed into reverence by the majesty of terrestrial objects-not grouped pictorially, as they are through out Europe, but isolated and wild in their patriarchal solitudes. Yet, inasmuch as civilized man requires for his true enjoyment, something that will remind him when he roams, that he is not quite out of the reach of humanity, so he will feel less pleasure in the contemplation of the glorious images spread out before him in the prairie and the wilderness, than in the more restricted landscapes surrounding him at home. It is the vastness of American scenery that astonishes an Englishman especially; it strikes sensibly but unsatis-ington and Baltimore, and half-a-dozen other American factorily, for there is a limit to human vision, beyond which neither eye nor thought can penetrate with any degree of certainty. But more than all, perhaps, is the absence of those ancient edifices, which speak of the past history of mankind, and are associated with so many proud and interesting recollections ;-the ruined castles, the venerable abbeys, the fine old baronial mansions embosomed in verdant woods, or seated beside clear and rapid streams, or standing in ancestral parks, amid the shadow of whose trees whole generations of noble and powerful families have lived and died. Nowhere do such objects appeal so strongly as in our own land; and they are scarcely less influential on the mind of the foreign visitor who finds his way to Ragland, Chepstow, and Kenilworth, Tintern or Kirkstall, Crewe-Hall and Knole. from the surface of the American town, substituting convenience for appearance. It is probable there is no these new improvements for a permanent residence; one who, in the end, would not give a preference to but it is not to be denied that, so far as the landscape is concerned, the customs of the middle ages constructed much the most picturesque and striking collections of the mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for thrown together with finer effects, than are to be met with among the mountainous regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or two that are to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach the reader that Richmond and Boston, and Wash Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper are the two greatest descriptive painters of their respective countries; each of them has written like a poet, and immortalized the scenery of his native land. In the volume now lying before us the latter writer makes some very truthful remarks on the comparative beauties of Europe and America. We place our own quarter of the earth first, only because it is regarded as the "mother" of the other, and as such is entitled to precedence. After expatiating upon the rich "bits" of landscape that greet the eye of the traveller on all sides throughout the more picturesque parts of populated Europe;-the graceful winding curvatures of the old highways, the acclivities and declivities, the copses, meadows and woods, the half-hidden church, nestling among the leaves of its elms and yews, the neat and secluded hamlet, the farm-house, with all its comforts and sober arrangements; he goes on to say: "The Old World enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and pleasing, in connexion with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity, in the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction of military works for the protection of the towns of Europe, that still remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some of the finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish a picture. Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here, for we have no castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified towns, and had no existence at the period when works of this nature came within the ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary, the utilitarian spirit of the day labours to erase every inequality towns that do possess more or less of an unequal surface, But it is time our attention was directed to some of the exquisite little plates that embellish Mr. Putnam's book, and we open it on a charming rural sketch made by Huntingdon, near the village of Rondout, not far from the mighty Hudson, and about ninety miles from New York. The view represents one of the tributary streams of the mighty river flowing between low banks; in its waters are reflected the scarlet leaves of the maple, the silvery lining of the willow, the vivid emerald of the oak, the white blossom of the locust-tree, the orange-berrics of the ash, and the deep dark green of a few pines whose heads have been lopped by the storms of many winters. In the centre of the mass of foliage stands a tiny cottage, with the smoke from its low chimney curling up amid the umbrageous shadows of the trees; a group of cattle are quenching their thirst in the water that flows amid large stones into the foreground of the composition, and a flock of waterfowl rests on its surface. It is a picture our own Creswick or Lee might have painted. The neighbourhood of the Catskill Mountains seems to be a favourite place of resort with the artists of America: a view of a scene in their vicinity, from the pencil of J. F. Kennedy, introduces us to |