On the smaller rivers these evils are somewhat ameliorated; for in the rural and uncorrupt villages of the interior, you may find servants born on the spot, and content to live in the neighbourhood. The market is better, too, and the society less exposed to the evils that result from too easy an access to the metropolis. No place can be rural, in all the _virtues_ of the phrase, where a steamer will take the villager to the city between noon and night, and bring him back between midnight and morning. There is a suburban look and character about all the villages on the Hudson which seems out of place among such scenery. They are suburbs; in fact, steam has destroyed the distance between them and the city. The Mountain-House on the Catskill, it should be remarked, is a luxurious hotel. How the proprietor can have dragged up, and keeps dragging up, so many superfluities from the river level to that eagle’s nest, excites your wonder. It is the more strange, because in climbing a mountain the feeling is natural that you leave such enervating indulgences below. The mountain-top is too near heaven. It should be a monastery to lodge in so high—a St. Gothard, or a Vallambrosa. But here you may choose between Hermitages, “white” or “red,” Burgundies, Madeiras, French dishes, and French dances, as if you had descended upon Capua. [Illustration] TRENTON HIGH FALLS. * * * * * Those who visit these Falls in the pleasantest season for travelling, (the time at which the drawing was taken by Mr. Bartlett,) see them when there is the least water; consequently, when they are (as falls) at their lesser phase of grandeur. It is like seeing a race-horse in the stall, or a line-of-battle-ship in port, with sails furled. It is possible that after one of the tremendous thunder-storms which burst upon this climate sometimes in summer, the glory of the cataract may, for a few hours, renew, and so unite the splendour of full foliage with the flashing of mighty waters: but this is a chance which the traveller for pleasure will scarce hit or wait for. It should be remembered, however, in looking on the drawing, that it is one of a sleeping lion. The frowning walls on either side, driven asunder by the plunges of the torrent in more “yeasty moods,” present a sufficient scale by which to measure its slumbering power. Those who live in climes where snow seldom falls, and more seldom lies through one sunny day unmelted, can have but a faint idea of a spring _freshet_ in America. After the first heavy snow in December, each successive fall adds solidity to the heap upon the earth’s bosom, and the alternate thawing and freezing consolidates the bottom into ice, and cuts off the heat of the soil from the flakes added almost daily to the surface. Till the middle of March, perhaps, or later, the sleighing (_Anglicè_ sledging) is hard and crisp. Then the