five minutes, conveying passengers on foot and horseback, gigs, carriages, carts, any thing and every thing. The day was lovely--the broad bright river was gemmed with a thousand sails. Away to the right it stretched between richly-wooded banks, placid and blue as a lake; to the left, in the rocky doorway of the narrows, two or three ships stood revealed against the cloudless sky. We reached the opposite coast, and walked. It was nearly three miles from where we landed to the scene of the "_spoon-exercise_." The whole of our route lay through a beautiful wild plantation, or rather strip of wood, I should say, for 'tis nature's own gardening which crowns the high bank of the river; through which trellis-work of varied foliage we caught exquisite glimpses of the glorious waters, the glittering city, and the opposite banks, decked out in all the loveliest contrast of sunshine and shade. As we stood in our leafy colonnade looking out upon this fair scene, the rippling water made sweet music far down below us, striking with its tiny silver waves the smooth sand and dark-coloured rocks from which they were ebbing. Many of the trees were quite new to me, and delighted me with their graceful forms and vivid foliage. The broad-leaved catalpa, and the hickory with its bright coral-coloured berries. Many lovely lowly things, too, grew by our pathside, which we gathered as we passed, to bring away, but which withered in our hands ere we returned. Gorgeous butterflies were zigzagging through the air, and for the first time I longed to imprison them. In pursuing one, I ran into the midst of a slip of clover land, but presently jumped out again, on hearing the swarms of grasshoppers round me. Mr. ---- caught one; it was larger and thicker than the English grasshopper, and of a dim mottled brown colour, like the plumage of our common moth; but presently, on his opening his hand to let it escape, it spread out a pair of dark purple wings, tipped with pale primrose colour, and flew away a beautiful butterfly, such as the one I had been seduced by. The slips of grass ground on the left of our path were the only things that annoyed me: they were ragged, and rank, and high,--they wanted mowing; and if they had been mowed soft, and thick, and smooth, like an English lawn, how gloriously the lights and shadows of this lovely sky would fall through the green roof of this wood upon them! There is nothing in nature that, to my fancy, receives light and shade with as rich an effect as sloping lawn land. Oh! England, England! how I have seen your fresh emerald mantle deepen and brighten in a summer's day. About a hundred yards from the place where they dined on Tuesday, with no floor but the damp earth, no roof but the dripping trees, stands a sort of _café_; a long, low, pretty Italianish-looking building. The wood is cleared away in front of it, and it commands a lovely view of the Hudson and its opposite shores: and