This was late in October; I have twice revisited the scene amid the freshness and beauty of June; but I think the later Autumn is by far the better season. There is then a sternness in the sky, a plaintive melancholy in the sighing of the wind through the mottled forest foliage, which harmonizes better with the spirit of the scene. For the Genius of Niagára, O friend! is never a laughter-loving spirit. For the gaudy vanities, the petty pomps, the light follies of the hour, he has small sympathy. Let not the giddy heir bring here his ingots, the selfish aspirant his ambition, the libertine his victim, and hope to find enjoyment and gaiety in the presence. Let none come here to nurse his pride, or avarice, or any low desire. God and His handiwork here stand forth in lone sublimity; and all the petty doings and darings of the ants at the base of the pyramid appear in their proper insignificance. Few can have visited Niagára and left it no humbler, no graver than they came. The common fault of visiters here, as of sight-seers elsewhere, is that of haste. Two hours are devoted to a scene which requires days, if not weeks, for its proper appreciation. Niagára, like St. Peter’s at Rome, enlarges on the vision; the mind must have time to expand ere it can grasp all its giant proportions. The first view always deludes and disappoints the gazer with regard to the height of the perpendicular fall; the vast scale on which Nature has fashioned her wonder-work deceives; the depth, and breadth, and volume, detract from the altitude; and I doubt if the larger number of new comers would not estimate the height at less than one half the one hundred and sixty feet which the line gives from surface above to surface below. Observation, however, soon corrects the error; if not, a walk down the interminable stairway, and a gaze upward at the ocean which seems to be poured from a window of heaven, will do it at once.