But, gentle reader, although it be a well-worn tale, I had not seen the Falls for five years, and I wish to tell you whether they are altered or improved; and most likely you will take some little interest in so old a friend as the Falls of Niagara; for you must have read about those before you read Robinson Crusoe, and have had them thrust under your notice by every tourist, from Trollope to Dickens. They say, _on dit_, I mean, which is not translatable into English, that this is the age of Materialism and Utilitarianism. By George, you would think so indeed, if you had the chance of seeing the Falls of Niagara twice in ten years. They are materially injured by the Utilitarian mania. The Yankees put an ugly shot tower on the brink of the Horseshoe at the beginning of that era, and they are about to consummate the barbarism, by throwing a wire bridge, if the British government is consenting, over the river, just below the American Fall. But Niagara is a splendid "Water Privilege," and so thought the Company of the City of the Falls--a most enlightened body of British subjects, who first disfigured the Table Rock, by putting a water-mill on it, and now are adding the horror of gin-palaces, with sundry ornamental booths for the sale of juleps and sling, all along the venerable edge of the precipice, so that trees of unequalled beauty on the bank above, trees which grow no where else in Canada, are daily falling before the monster of gain. What they will do next in their freaks it is difficult to surmise; but it requires very little more to show that patriotism, taste, and self-esteem, are not the leading features in the character of the inhabitants of this part of the world. If the Colossus of Rhodes could be remodelled and brought to the Falls, one leg standing in Canada, and the other in the United States, there would be a company immediately formed for hydraulic purposes, to convey a waste pipe from the tips of the fingers as far as Buffalo; and another to light the paltry village of Manchester, all mills and mint-juleps, with the natural gas which would be made to feed the lamp. A grogshop would be set up in his head; telescopes would be poked out of his eyes, and philosophers would seat themselves on his toes, to calculate whether the waters of the British Fall could not be dammed out, so as to turn a few cotton mills more in Manchester, as it is called, which scheme some Canadian worthy would upset, by resorting to Mr. Lyell's proof that the whole river might once have flowed, and may again be made to flow, down to St. David's--thus, by expending a few millions, cutting off Jonathan's chance.