“The dull colours of English autumnal foliage give you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon. The change here is gradual; in America it is the work of a night—of a single frost! “Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the still green and lingering summer, and to awake in the morning to a spectacle like this! “It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree-tops—as if the sunsets of a summer—gold, purple, and crimson—had been fused in the alembic of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light and colour over the wilderness. It is as if every leaf in these countless trees had been painted to outflush the tulip—as if, by some electric miracle, the dyes of the earth’s heart had struck upward, and her crystals and ores, her sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, had let forth their imprisoned colours to mount through the roots of the forests, and, like the angels that in olden time entered the bodies of the dying, re-animate the perishing leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery.” [Illustration] SABBATH-DAY POINT, LAKE GEORGE. * * * * * The lovely waters of Lake George are known to the Catholics by the prettier and more appropriate name of Lake Sacrament. Its singular transparency, surpassing that of all other lakes in the world, probably suggested some tradition of its sacredness; and its water was carried to great distances to supply the consecrated fonts. The singular seclusion of its position, far aside from the general current of population, has assisted to preserve its character. Loch Katrine, at the Trosachs, is a miniature-likeness of Lake George. It is the only lake in Europe that has at all the same style or degree of beauty. The small green islands, with their abrupt shores,—the emerald depths of the water, overshadowed and tinted by the tenderest moss and foliage,—the lofty mountains in the back-ground,—and the tranquil character of the lake, over which the wind is arrested and rendered powerless by the peaks of the hills and the lofty island-summits,—are all points of singular resemblance. Loch Katrine can scarce be called picturesque, except at the Trosachs, however; while Lake George, throughout all the mazes of its three hundred and sixty-five islands (there are said to be just this number), preserves the same wild and racy character of beauty. Varying in size, from a mile in length to the circumference of a tea-table, these little islets present the most multiplied changes of surface and aspect—upon some only moss and flowers, upon others a miniature forest, with its outer trees leaning over to the pellucid bosom of the lake, as if drawn downwards by the reflection of their own luxuriant beauty.