Oh, how poor, how weak seemed the conflict of human passion in the presence of this sublime, this wondrous spectacle! I could not speak,--I could scarcely breathe,--I was borne down, overpowered, almost annihilated. My knees bent, my hands involuntarily clasped themselves over the arm of Ernest, and in this attitude of intense adoration I looked up and whispered, "God,--eternity." "Enthusiast!" exclaimed he; but his countenance was luminous with the light that glowed on mine. He put his arm around me, but did not attempt to raise me. Edith and her mother were near, in company with a friend who had been our fellow-traveller from New England, and who had extended his journey beyond its prescribed limits for the sake of being our companion. I looked towards Edith with tremulous interest. As she stood leaning on her crutches, her garments fluttering in the breeze, I almost expected to see her borne from us like down upon the wind, and floating on the bosom of that mighty current. I said I did not mean to attempt a description of scenes which have baffled the genius and eloquence of man. "Now I am content to die!" said an ancient traveller, when the colossal shadow of the Egyptian pyramids first fell on his weary frame. But what are those huge, unmoving monuments of man's ambition, compared to this grandest of creation's mysteries, whose deep and thundering voice is repeating, day after day and night after night,--"forever and ever," and whose majestic motion, rushing onward, plunging downward, never pausing, never resting, is emblematic of the sublime march of Deity, from everlasting to everlasting,--from eternity to eternity? Shall I ever forget the moment when I stood on Termination Rock, beyond which no mortal foot has ever penetrated? I stood in a shroud of gray mist, wrapping me on every side,--above, below, around. I shuddered, as if the hollow, reverberating murmurs that filled my ears were the knell of the departed sun. That cold, gray mist; it penetrated the depths of my spirit; it drenched, drowned it, filled it with vague, ghost-like images of dread and horror. I cast one glance behind, and saw a gleam of heaven's sunny blue, one bright dazzling gleam flashing between the rugged rock and the rushing waters. It was as if the veil of the temple of nature were rent, and the glory of God shone through the fissure. "Let us return," said I to Ernest. "I feel as if I had passed through the valley of the shadow of death. Is it not sacrilegious to penetrate so deeply into the mysteries of nature?"