sun draws towards the line, and with the equinox come soft southern winds, with sharp changes to the north, pouring sleet and rain upon the crusty covering of nature; and, first of all, the small streams begin to trickle under the ice, smothered and faint; the roads across the hard-frozen rivers crack and grow treacherous; and the horse, as they phrase it here, _slumps through_ in travelling on the highway. As the days grow longer, the snow gets clammy and heavy, and drops to the ground, (undermined by the water,) an acre at a time, clicking like a troop of morris-dancers. If you “sit upon a rail” at noon-day, and send a dog to run over an untrodden field, his weight will break it down in large tablets, like the giving way of a marble floor. Then comes the spring thaw. Instead of one rivulet to half a mile, every hill-side sends down a hundred streams, every road is a brook, every hollow in the fields an overflowing pond. The benevolent societies which thrive more by the “widows’ mites” than the rich man’s gift, have learned the secret of these “small contributions.” Down they pour, in troops of legions, to the beds of the larger water-courses, “drowning the springs,” overflowing the banks, and laying every low plain under water. The ice crashes and loosens in the large rivers, and with the loosening of their frost-bound chains, the merry dance is led off to the ocean. If you would see waterfalls, it should be then; though the foliage is not around them, nor the sky or the moon-light so genial above. Niagara alone, of all the cataracts, remains unchanged. He rolls on in his calm sublimity, spring and autumn, summer and winter, the same. His floods seem never to increase by the melting of snow, nor to be drunk up by the fervour of the sun. If changes he has, they are imperceptible, or seen only in the crumbling of rock beneath him, mountains at a convulsion, and at intervals of years. Trenton is in a wild and not very accessible part of the country, else it were worth the while of the traveller to see these fine Falls during the spring. I am very sure that a series of sketches upon the same ground—the same scenes by the same artist, done when the waters are at the flood, would not be recognised as at all resembling. The attempt would be curious to the artist, at least. [Illustration] VALLEY OF THE SHENANDOAH, FROM JEFFERSON’S ROCK. * * * * *