The day was sultry, the air heavy and still, and a strange fog, or rather a series of dark clouds, hung resting on the bosom of the lake, which in some places was smooth and transparent as glass--in others, little eddies of wind had ruffled it into tiny waves, or welts rather--so that it presented the appearance of patchwork. The boatmen looked up, and foretold a storm; but when we came within three or four miles from the mouth of the river Niagara, the fog drew off like a curtain, and the interminable line of the dark forest came into view, stretching right and left along the whole horizon; then the white buildings of the American fort, and the spires of the town of Niagara, became visible against the rich purple-green back-ground, and we landed after a four hours' voyage. The threatened storm came on that night. The summer storms of Canada are like those of the tropics: not in Italy, not among the Apennines, where I have in my time heard the "live thunder leaping from crag to crag," did I ever hear such terrific explosions of sound as burst over our heads this night. The silence and the darkness lent an added horror to the elemental tumult--and for the first time in my life I felt sickened and unpleasantly affected in the intervals between the thunder-claps, though I cannot say I felt fear. Meantime the rain fell as in a deluge, threatening to wash us into the lake, which reared itself up, and roared--like a monster for its prey. Yet, the next morning, when I went down upon the shore, how beautiful it looked--the hypocrite!--there it lay rocking and sleeping in the sunshine, quiet as a cradled infant. Niagara, in its girdle of verdure and foliage, glowing with fresh life, and breathing perfume, appeared to me a far different place from what I had seen in winter. As I stood on the shore, quietly thinking, I was startled by the sound of the death-bell, pealing along the sunny blue waters. They said it was tolled for a young man of respectable family, who, at the age of three or four and twenty, had died from habitual drinking; his elder brother having a year or two before fallen from his horse in a state of intoxication, and perished in consequence. Yes, everything I see and hear on this subject convinces me that it should be one of the first objects of the government to put down, by all and every means, a vice which is rotting at the core of this colony--poisoning the very sources of existence; but all their taxes, and prohibitions, and excise laws, will do little good, unless they facilitate the means of education. In society, the same evening, the appearance of a very young, very pretty, sad-looking creature, with her first baby at her bosom, whose husband was staggering and talking drunken gibberish at her side, completed the impression of disgust and affright with which the continual spectacle of this vile habit strikes me since I have been in this country.