effectually prevents our seeing anything an inch beyond the panes of glass in the windows, and which gives the idea that Niagara is unduly extending its area. The rain was still heavy and incessant when the party arrived at Niagara, but they were all bent on making the best of it, and some of them walked from the station at the Falls. They trudged manfully through mud and water along the road right up to the verge of the whirling clouds of steam-like vapour which were drifting over the Canadian side, by the edge of the gruesome gorge through which the St. Lawrence[8] runs at full speed, as if terrified by its tremendous jump, to escape into placid Ontario, and, to the immense wonder of a solitary spectator, went past the hotel. "Well," quoth he, when it went forth that "the Duke, Lord Stafford, and others were walking," "that's ree-markable! The Duke walking in the rain! I guess he don't mind being wet"--which was a fact. Well! Niagara has disappointed no one, for a wonder! I have seen people who were quite displeased with the Falls at first, because they failed to grasp the magnitude of what they came to look at. And it must be owned the circumstances under which we beheld it were not exhilarating. Church has painted the scene; gifted beings may pour out their souls in a great cascade of words to express what they think ought to be felt by "a properly prehensile intelligence" at the sight, but no one can describe it. I should have thought it was scarcely within the reach of the power of man to render this stupendous spectacle so irritating to the eye. But on the American side they have succeeded in making Niagara nearly hideous with smoke-stacks, factory chimneys, staring advertisements, and the _affiches_ of quack doctors painted on the rocks. Down by the edge of the water they have put a thing with blue, red, and white bands, like an enormous humming-top, and the banks of the river are disfigured by shoots of rubbish of all sorts, débris and timber, and, terrible to relate, streams of black oozy tarry matter discharged from the gasworks!