A lovelier landscape can scarce be imagined than that which presented itself from the deck of the sloop. It was the first time I had ascended the river, or indeed that any of the Clawbonny party had been up it so high, Mr. Hardinge excepted; and everybody was called on deck to look at the beauties of the hour. The sloop was about a mile above Hudson, and the view was to be gazed at towards the south. This is perhaps the finest reach of this very beautiful stream, though it is not the fashion to think so; the Highlands being the part usually preferred. It is easy enough for me, who have since lived among the sublimity of the Swiss and Italian lakes, to understand that there is nothing of a very sublime character, relatively considered, in any of the reaches of the Hudson; but it would be difficult to find a river that has so much which is exquisitely beautiful; and this, too, of a beauty which borders on the grand. Lucy was the first person to create any doubts in my mind concerning the perfection of the Highlands. Just as the cockney declaims about Richmond Hill--the _inland_ view from Mont-Martre, of a clouded day, is worth twenty of it--but just as the provincial London cockney declaims about Richmond Hill, so has the provincial American been in the habit of singing the praises of the Highlands of the Hudson. The last are sufficiently striking, I will allow; but they are surpassed in their own kind by a hundred known mountain landscapes; while the softer parts of the river have scarcely a rival. Lucy, I repeat, was the first person to teach me this distinction--Lucy, who then had never seen either Alps or Apennines. But her eye was as true as her principles, her tongue, or her character. All was truth about this dear girl--truth unadulterated and unalloyed. "Certainly, my dear Mrs. Drewett," the dear girl said, as she stood supporting the old lady, who leaned on her arm, gazing at the glorious sunset, "the Highlands have nothing to equal this! To me this seems all that art could achieve; while I confess the views in the mountains have ever appeared to want something that the mind can imagine." Mrs. Drewett, though a respectable, was a common-place woman. She belonged to the vast class that do most of their thinking by proxy; and it was a sort of heresy in her eyes to fancy anything could surpass the Highlands. Poor Mrs. Drewett! She was exceedingly cockney, without having the slightest suspicion of it. _Her_ best ought to be everybody else's best. She combated Lucy's notion warmly, therefore, protesting that the Highlands _could_ not have a superior. This is a sort of argument it is not easy to overcome; and her companion was content to admire the scene before her, in silence, after urging one or two reasons, in support of her opinion, in her own quiet, unpretending manner.