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The notion probably originated in the fact that travelling in the sunshine the reflection of isolated rock crystal strikes upon the eye at a distance with dazzling brightness, which entirely disappears on change of position or on approaching to the spot where it was first observed. These appearances are frequent upon the open upper grounds of these mountains, and have probably given them the name of the Crystal Hills.

The mountain streams, particularly those in the northern region of New Hampshire, are rife with salmon trout, a fish of more delicious flavor than any other that sports in American waters; as much superior to the perch and suckers and chubs that are to be found in sluggish pools and streams, as the running water of the cold mountain brook is more grateful to the parched throat than the standing liquid of a summer frog-pond. The sport of trout-fishing among the mountains has an air of romance, tempting the inhabitant of the city to journey many miles for its enjoyment. Those who by instinct or education know how to handle the fly or the minnow; who can await with patience the reached out arm long in the same position for a "glorious nibble;" who can leap over log and stump, through bush and brake, angling at the turn of an eddy, the tail of a weed-bed, or at the foot of a noisy waterfall, and enjoy the sport with the gusto of Izaak Walton one hundred and fifty years ago; such as these know how to appreciate the pleasures of trout-fishing.

The beauty and grandeur of scenery in Scotland or Switzerland, or any other country of Europe, cannot exceed that of the mountain region which I have been describing. What magnificent landscape will compare with the different views at the Notch; with the Silver Cascade, half a mile from its entrance, issuing from the mountain eight hundred feet above the subjacent valley, passing over almost perpendicularly a series of rocks so little broken as to preserve the appearance of a uniform current, and yet so far disturbed as to be perfectly white; with the Flume, at no great distance, falling over three precipices from the height of two hundred and

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and over

fifty feet, down the two first in a single current, the last in three, uniting again at the bottom in a basin formed by the hand of Nature, perhaps by the wearing of the waters, in the rocks; with the impending rocks directly overhead on either side to a vast height rent asunder by that Power which first upheaved the mountains, leaving barely space for the head stream of the Saco and the road to pass; with the track of the awful avalanches at no great distance on either side, coming down from the height, throwing rocks, trees and earth across the defile, damming up the stream and forcing it to seek new channels, and covering up or carrying away clean to the surface of the hard rock the long travelled road!

If the eye is not here sated with the grandeur and beauty of the stupendous works of the Almighty, and the changes he has wrought, let the traveller pass into the Franconia Notch, near the source of the Merrimack river, twenty miles southerly of the White Mountain Notch.

The Man of the Mountain has long been personated and apostrophized: his covered head is the sure forerunner of the thunder shower or storm; and in the world of fiction he is made the main agent of the mountain genii, who bewilder and mislead the benighted traveller, and whose lodgement is in the rocky caverns hitherto unfrequented by the human tread. The Profile is perched at the height of more than a thousand feet the solid rock presents a side view or profile of the human face, every feature of which in the due proportion is conspicuous. It is no inanimate profile; it looks the living man, as if his voice could reach to the proportionate distance of its greater size.

The Spirit of

among the hills.

Liberty dwells upon the mountains and
Look to the Highlands; to the

"Scots who hae with Wallace bled

Scots whom Bruce had often led."

Look to Switzerland, to William Tell, to the Tyrolese,

"Where the song of freedom soundeth ; "

to the Circassians upon the Caucasus now contending for liberty against the whole power of Russian despotism. Can we find in the plain country of any nation on earth samples of a valorous, a chivalrous, an indomitable spirit such as these? Where is the district of country that can present a race of men more devoted to liberty and independence, more courageous and daring, than those who came from the hill and mountain towns of New England to fight the enemies of the country at Lexington and Bunker Hill? Such men as Rogers and Stark, in their snow-shoes, in the war of 1756, could do more with a single company of rangers, natives of New-England mountain towns, to keep at bay and annoy the French and savage foe, than Lord Howe's entire command of several thousand British troops.

The mountain region of New Hampshire has been denominated the Switzerland of America. Our scenery is surpassed in beauty by no scenery on earth. Coming down from our mountains, I would direct your attention to our beautiful lakes. The eye never traced a more splendid prospect than the view from Red Hill. The view from

Mount Washington shows the high mountains around as successive dark waves of the sea at your feet, and all other objects, the villages and sea, as more indistinct from their distance. The view from Red Hill, an elevation of some twenty-five hundred feet, which is gained on horseback, brings all objects distinctly to the naked eye. On the one hand the Winnipiseogee lake, twenty-two miles in length, with its bays and islands and surrounding villages and farms of parti-colored fields, spreads out like a field of glass at the southeast. Loch Lomond with all its splendor and beauty presents no scenery that is not equalled in the environs of the Winnipiseogee. Its suite of hills and mountains serves as a contrast to increase its splendor. We stand upon the higher of the three points of Red Hill, limited every where by regular circular lines and elegant in its figure beyond most other mountains. The autumnal foliage, overspreading the ranges of mountains, in the season after vege

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tation has been arrested by the frosts, is a beauty in our scenery that has never been described by any inhabitant of Great Britain, because no such scenery ever there existed.

If Mr. Jefferson thought a single point upon the Potomac where that river breaks through the Blue Ridge to be worth to the European observer a voyage across the Atlantic, will it be deemed extravagant if I should say to the inhabitants of a town or city of the United States any where along the Atlantic ocean, that the Notch of the White Hills, the Notch of the Franconia mountains, the Cascade or the Flume, or the Face of the Old Man, or the view from Red Hill, one alone or all together, are worth ten times the expense and labor of a journey of one hundred, five hundred or one thousand miles?

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FLATTERY.

FOR AN ALBUM.

BY THOMAS G. FESSENDEN. [Born at Walpole. Died at Boston.]

MISS ANN, you are, it seems to me,
An essence all ethereal;

The brightest being that can be,
Entirely immaterial.

A pencil tipped with solar rays

Your charms could scarcely blazon; Contrasted with your beauty's blaze Bright Sol's a pewter basin.

Transcendent little sprig of light!

If rhymes are always true,
An angel is an ugly sprite
Compared to sylph like you.

You frowning tell me : "This indeed
Is flattery past all bearing;

I ne'er before did hear nor read
Of any quite so glaring."

Yes, this is flattery, sure enough,
And its exaggeration

May teach you how to hold such stuff
In utter detestation.

Should beaux your ladyship accost

With something like this flummery,

Tell them their labor will be lost,

For this transcends their mummery.

The man whose favor 's worth a thought, To flattery can't descend;

The servile sycophant is not

Your lover nor your friend.

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