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THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD.

account for the sundering of a long range of great rocks, or rather of vast mountains; or for the existing evidences of the immense force by which the rupture' was effected.

The entrance of the chasm is formed by two rocks, standing perpendicularly, at the distance of twenty-two feet from each other; one about twenty feet in height, the other about twelve. Half of the space is occupied by the brook mentioned as the head-stream of the Saco; the other half by the road. The stream is lost and invisible beneath a mass of fragments, partly blown out of the road, and partly thrown down by some great convulsion.

The rocks,

When we entered the Notch, we were struck with the wild and solemn appearance of every thing before us. The scale on which all the objects in view were formed was the scale of grandeur only. rude and ragged in a manner rarely paralleled, were fashioned and piled by a hand operating only in the boldest and most irregular manner. As we advanced, these appearances increased rapidly. Huge masses of granite, of every abrupt form, and hoary with a moss which seemed the product of ages, recalling to the mind the saxum vetustum of Virgil, speedily rose to a mountainous height. Before us the view widened fast to the southeast. Behind us it closed almost instantaneously, and presented nothing to the eye but an impassable barrier of mountains.

About half a mile from the entrance of the chasm, we saw, in full view, the most beautiful cascade, perhaps, in the world. It issued from a mountain on the right, about eight hundred feet above the subjacent valley, and at the distance from us of about two miles. The stream ran over a series of rocks almost perpendicular, with a course so little broken as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current; and yet so far disturbed as to be perfectly white. The sun shone with the clearest splendor, from a station in the heavens the most advantageous to our prospect; and the cascade glittered down the vast steep like a stream of burnished silver.

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It was rough-mighty rough;

But the boys they stood by,
And they brought him the stuff
For a house on the sly;

And the old woman-well, she did washing, and took on when no one was nigh.

But this yer luck o' Dow's

Was so powerful mean

That the spring near his house

Dried right up on the green;

And he sunk forty feet down for water, but

nary a drop to be seen.

Then the bar petered out,

And the boys wouldn't stay :

And the chills got about,

And his wife fell away,

But Dow in his well, kept a peggin' in his usual ridikilous way.

One day, it was June,
And a year ago, jest,—
This Dow kem at noon

To his work, like the rest,

With a shovel and pick on his shoulder, and

a Derringer hid in his breast.

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T

MRS. MARY HOWITT.

HERE is a charm connected with mountains, so powerful that the merest mention of them, the merest sketch of their magnificent features, kindles the imagination, and carries the spirit at once into the bosom of their enchanted regions. How the mind is filled with their vast solitude! how the inward eye is fixed on their silent, their sublime, their everlasting peaks! How our heart bounds to the music of their solitary cries, to the tinkle of the gushing rills, to the sound of their cataracts! How inspiriting are the odors that breathe from the upland turf, from the rock-hung flower, from the hoary and solemn pine! how beautiful are those lights and shadows thrown abroad, and that fine, transparent haze which is diffused over the valleys and lower slopes, as over a vast, inimitable picture!

At the autumnal season, the ascents of our own mountains are most practicable. The heat of summer has dried up the moisture with which

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winter rains saturate the spongy turf of the hollows; and the atmosphere, clear and settled, admits of the most extensive prospects. Whoever

ALPINE PEAKS.

has not ascended our mountains knows little of the beauties of this beautiful island. Whoever has not climbed their long and heathy ascents, and seen the trembling mountain flowers, the glowing moss, the richly tinted lichens at his feet; and scented the fresh aroma of the uncultivated sod, and of the spicy shrubs; and heard the bleat of the flock across their solitary expanses, and the wild cry of the mountain plover, the raven, or the eagle; and seen the rich and russet hues of

distant slopes and eminences, the livid

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gashes of ravines and precipices, the white glittering line of falling waters, and the cloud tumultuously whirling round the lofty summit; and then stood panting on that summit, and beheld the clouds alternately gather and break over a thousand giant peaks and ridges of every varied hue, but all silent as images of eternity; and cast his gaze over lakes and forests, and smoking towns, and wide lands to the very ocean, in all their gleaming and reposing beauty, knows nothing of the treasures of pictorial wealth which his own country possesses.

But when we let loose the imagination from even these splendid scenes, and give it free charter to range through the far more glorious ridges of continental mountains, through Alps, Apennines, or Andes, how

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