Our young friend, the Rev. Neville Trueman, afterwards a prominent figure in the history of early Methodism, halted his horse on a bluff jutting out into the Niagara River, both to enjoy the refreshing breeze that swept over the water and to admire the beautiful prospect. At his feet swept the broad and noble river, reflecting on its surface the snowy masses of "thunderhead" clouds, around which the lightning still played, and which, transfigured and glorified in the light of the setting sun, seemed to the poetic imagination of the young man like the City of God descending out of heaven, with its streets of gold and foundations of precious stones, while the rainbow that spanned the heavens seemed like the rainbow of the Apocalypse round about the throne of God. Under the inspiration of the beauty of the scene, the young preacher began to sing in a clear, sweet, tenor voice that song of the ages, which he had learned at his mother's knee among the green hills of Vermont-- Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation, Sink heart and voice opprest, I know not, oh! I know not What joys await me there; What radiancy of glory, What bliss beyond compare. They stand, those walls of Zion, All jubilant with song, And bright with many an angel, And all the martyr throng. With jasper glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze, The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays. Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced; The saints build up its fabric, The corner-stone is Christ. [Footnote: We cannot resist the temptation to give a few lines of the original hymn of Bernard of Clugny, a Breton monk of English parentage of the 12th century--"the sweetest of all the hymns of heavenly homesickness of the soul," and for generations one of the most familiar, through translations, in many languages. The rhyme and rhythm are so difficult, that the author was able to master it, he believed, only by special inspiration of God. Urbs Syon aurea, patria lactea, cive decora, Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis et cor et ora, Nescio, nescio, quae jubilatio, lux tibi qualis, Quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.] For a moment longer he gazed upon the broad, flowing river which divided two neighbouring peoples, one in language, in blood, in heroic early traditions, and the common heirs of the grandest literature the world has ever seen, yet severed by a deep, wide, angry-flowing stream of strife, which, dammed up for a time, was about to burst forth in a desolating flood that should overwhelm and destroy some of the fairest fruits of civilization in both countries. As he gazed northward, he beheld, on the eastern bank of the river, the snowy walls and grass-grown ramparts of Fort Niagara, above which floated proudly the stars and stripes.