Gloomy must the walls of Grandison Place appear during the absence of its inmates,--that city set upon a hill that could not be hid, whose illuminated windows glittered on the vale below with beacon splendor, and discoursed of genial hospitality and kindly charity to the surrounding shadows. Sadly must the evening gale sigh through the noble oaks, whose branches met over the winding avenue, and lonely the elm-tree wave its hundred arms above the unoccupied seat,--that seat, beneath whose breezy shade I had first beheld the pale, impassioned, and haunting face of Ernest Linwood. CHAPTER XLIV. It is not my intention to describe our journey; and I fear it will indeed be an act of supererogation to attempt to give an idea of those majestic Falls, whose grandeur and whose glory have so long been the theme of the painter's pencil and the poet's lyre. Never shall I forget the moment when my spirit plunged into the roar and the foam, the thunders and the rainbows of Niagara. I paused involuntarily a hundred paces from the brink of the cataract. I was about to realize one of the magnificent dreams of my youthful imagination. I hesitated and trembled. I felt something of the trepidation, the blissful tremor that agitated my whole being when Ernest asked me into the moonlight garden at Cambridge, and I thought he was going to tell me that he loved me. The emotions I was about to experience would never come again, and I knew when once past could never be anticipated as now, with indescribable awe. I felt something as Moses did when he stood in the hollow of the rock, as the glory of the Lord was about to pass by. And surely no grander exhibition of God's glory ever burst on mortal eye, than this mighty volume of water, rushing, roaring, plunging, boiling, foaming, tossing its foam like snow into the face of heaven, throwing up rainbow after rainbow from unfathomable abysses, then sinking gradually into a sluggish calm, as if exhausted by the stupendous efforts it had made. Clinging to the arm of Ernest, I drew nearer and nearer, till all personal fear was absorbed in a sense of overpowering magnificence. I was a part of that glorious cataract; I participated in the mighty struggle; I panted with the throes of the pure, dark, tremendous element, vassal at once and conqueror of man; triumphed in the gorgeous _arcs-en-ciel_ that rested like angels of the Lord above the mist and the foam and the thunders of watery strife, and reposed languidly with the subsiding waves that slept like weary warriors after the din and strife of battle, the frown of contention lingering on their brows, and the smile of disdain still curling their lips.