hopelessly looked for by him who flies through those scenes, which, like a picture placed in a false light, no longer reflects the genius and skill of the artist. The old world enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and pleasing, in connection with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity, in the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction of military works for the protection of the towns in Europe, that still remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some of the finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish a picture. Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here, for we have no castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified towns, and had no existence at the period when works of this nature came within the ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary, the utilitarian spirit of the day labors to erase every inequality from the surface of the American town, substituting convenience for appearance. It is probable there is no one who, in the end, would not give a preference to these new improvements for a permanent residence; but it is not to be denied that so far as the landscape is concerned, the customs of the middle ages constructed much the most picturesque and striking collections of human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for the mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are thrown together with finer effects, than are to be met with among the mountainous regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or two that are to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach the reader, that Richmond and Boston, and Washington and Baltimore, and half-a-dozen other American towns that do possess more or less of an unequal surface, must yield the palm to those gloriously beautiful objects of the old world. When it is remembered, too, how much time has multiplied these last, it can be seen that there are large districts in the mountain regions of the other hemisphere, that enjoy this superiority over us, if superiority it can be called, to possess the picturesque, at the expense of the convenient. The imagination can scarcely equal the pictures of this nature that often meet the eye in the southern countries of Europe. Villages, with the chiselled outlines of castles, gray, sombre, but distinct, are often seen, perched on the summits of rocky heights, or adhering, as it might be, to their sides, in situations that are frequently even appalling, and which invariably lend a character of peculiar beauty to the view. There are parts of Europe in which the traveller encounters these objects in great numbers, and if an American, they never fail to attract his attention, as the wigwam and the bark canoe, and the prairie with lines of bisons,