It was one of those hot days in summer, when life is rather emotional than operative, and will lies locked in the ecstasy of sense. For a week the heat had been incessant, and now at early morning the thermometer stood at 96 in the shade. We were a party of loungers thrown together by chance, in a small town of western Maryland, united in nothing but a desire to escape the heat. The town lay in a little basin scooped out among circling mountains, which were veiled in almost perpetual vapors;--but this morning the vapors had parted, wreathing the mountains in light, delicately tinted circles, and disclosing a clear, glowing sky. To the east rose Table Rock, a black, frowning bowlder, resting, a mile and a half up the mountain, on a base so narrow, it seemed a breeze would rock it into perilous motion; while to the southwest, lay Fairmount, serene, stately, sloping upward with a symmetry which architecture might vainly emulate. We determined upon an excursion to the latter, and mounted our horses for the six-and-a-half miles ride. The road was macadamized, and worn so firm and level, it reminded me, constantly, of the stone walks in a granite quarry. Among our party was a young man just returned from Europe surfeited with scenery and sight-seeing, but for the rest, we were commonplace Americans, eager to see everything, and ready to go into ecstasies over everything which we saw. It was in early July, and the foliage had not yet wilted from its moist, bright greenness; the atmosphere was a wave of light, and the earth seemed no longer dust, dross, and atoms of decay, but surcharged and palpitating with sunshine. A dead calm pervaded the air, not a leaf fluttered, not a blade bent; nature was in a trance of heat and light. As we ascended the mountains, we were sensible of a slight motion in the vapors, and a cool murmur in the trees; it was the first breath of the mountain air, swelling as we advanced to a spicy, exhilarating breeze. The sea air is certainly more bracing, but I never experienced anything so soothing, as that wind wafted from cool mountain recesses. We left our horses at the inn, and proceeded on foot to the summit. We were on one of the peaks of the Alleghanies, looking down into a valley, which, below, had appeared enclosed by mountains, but now disclosed a broad opening to the south, while eastward ran the Blue Ridge, so wrapped and sublimated by azure mists, that it seemed a line of cloud mountains projected against the dazzling sky. As far as the eye could reach, the valley was a Paradise, so soft and delicate in its exuberant verdure, that the eye pained by the splendor of sky and air, was soothed without any cessation of delight; through its midst ran the Potomac, always limpid, but under this burning sun of a silvery brightness, shaded and mellowed by the foliage around. The wind, which we found so grateful, had increased steadily till it blew in strong gusts--a dense cloud