Leaving the valley, and driving along the Jefferson road, you have the mountains under an entirely new aspect. Before, they stood, as it were, endwise. Now you have them at broadside. Mile after mile you pass under their solid ramparts, but far enough to receive the idea of their height and breadth, their vast material greatness,--far enough to let the broad green levels of the intervale slide between, with here and there a graceful elm, towering and protective, and here and there a brown farm-house. But man's works show puny and mean beside nature, which seems spontaneous as a thought. Man's work is a toil; nature's is a relief. Man labors to attain abundance; nature, to throw off superabundance. The mountain-sides bristle with forests; man drags himself from his valley, and slowly and painfully levels an inch or two for his use; just a little way here and there a green field has crept up into the forest. The mountain-chin has one or two shaven spots; but for the greater part his beard is still unshorn. All along he sends down his boon to men. Everywhere you hear the scurrying feet of little brooks, tumbling pell-mell down the rocks in their frantic haste to reach a goal;--often a pleasant cottage-door, to lighten the burden and cool the brow of toil; often to pour through a hollow log by the wayside,--a never-failing beneficence and joy to the wearied, trusty horses. From the piazza of the Waumbeck House--a quiet, pleasant, home-like little hotel in Jefferson, and the only one, so far as I know, that has had the grace to take to itself one of the old Indian names in which the region abounds, Waumbeck, Waumbeck-Methna, Mountains of Snowy-Foreheads--a very panorama of magnificence unfolds itself. The whole horizon is rimmed with mountain-ranges. The White Mountain chain stands out bold and firm, sending greeting to his peers afar. Franconia answers clear and bright from the south-west; and from beyond the Connecticut the Green hills make response. Loth to leave, we turn away from these grand out-lying bulwarks to front on our return bulwarks as grand and massive, behind whose impregnable walls we seem shut in from the world forever.