.

Leaving 'Fort Tryon' and Spyt den Duivel as we sail, we bid adieu to the metropolis, by whose interminable streets we have thus far voyaged. This leave-taking is, however, only geographic and political, since we are still morally within the city limits, surrounded by its enterprise, its wealth, its taste, its culture, every thing which is its, except what may well be dispensed with-its noise and bustle, its dirt and dust and tainted airs. All around is, and still will be for many and many a mile, afloat or ashore, the far-reaching capital, spreading every where its thousand sails to the breeze, and ceaselessly working its mighty engines up and down on the waters; rushing to-andfro, with steam and lightning speed, upon the land; swarming all around in ever-recurring and ever-growing towns and villages;. nestling in pretty villas in each peaceful valley glade, and lording it in haughty walls upon every bold hill-top.

With the present ready and rapid means of transit both by land and by water; with the great fleet of magnificent steamers forever passing and repassing; and with the speed of the never-wearying cars, space is so well-nigh annihilated that to dwell amidst lawns and forests on the Hudson, twenty, thirty, or forty miles away, no more keeps the merchant from his city desk in early morning, than would his living in the remoter parts of the town itself. The tables of these far-off and yet near homes are daily furnished from the city markets, and with breakfast one cons the morning news of the city press. Far up this

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great watery metropolitan street-this river prolongation of Broadway every body reads, not the New-York Times' or 'Tribune' or 'Herald,' but the 'Herald,' the 'Tribune,' or the 'Times,' just as in Nassau-street or in Park Row itself.

The evidence of this extended rus in urbe is visible enough in the glimpses caught all along from the water; but to feel it thoroughly, we must step ashore continually, and pushing aside the curtaining copse or forest, gaze upon the life hidden within. What are the feudal skeletons and the baronial débris of old Rhine compared to these smiling tales, not of a dead and rotting past, but of a living and growing present, and a hoping future, to which every added day adds new realization and new promise? It would be pleasant to inquire what may be the moral effect upon the city, of this wide and constantly-recurring attrition with the holier influences of the country; how much more enterprise and earnestness men thus living may carry into their business; how much broader may be their humanity; how much more kindly and generous their hearts, more honest and truthful their acts. The

country, even in its plainest garb-and how much more in its noblest aspects, elevated by the wand of taste and art-is a high manifestation of the power of beauty; and as true beauty is goodness itself, surely the social life must, in the condition upon which we are looking, be onward and upward. GoD speed the people, then, in this exodus from the land of bondage of their neglected Penates; and while they regenerate and sanctify their hearths in the simple and peaceful retreats of nature, let them sow around them, in return, the seeds of mental activity, of art-culture, and of all the better growth of city life.

In exploring the smiling shores of the Hudson at this day, and especially that part of the river which stretches upward through our present itinaire, from Spyt den Duivel to Tappan-and to look at the marvellous tokens of wealth and taste seen on every side, now in the vine-covered cottage, and now in the stately mansion or the lordly, turret-capped castle, one might easily think that his steps had led him into a new world, and among a different and higher order of beings than it has been his wont to meet: and so, it is not a little curious to him to discover, on better acquaintance, that the Arcadian dreamers of the lawns, or the lavish lords of the wide manors around him, are none other than the self-same care-worn, money-getting men he used to run against, and, may be, still daily encounters in the crowded city streets. The identity, though, is only physical, for morally they are, while thus in the shadow of old woods, and within sound of the voice of running waters, not the hard, soulless nuggets they may seem to be in the sinister sunshine of the town. Oh! for an alchemy to make the transformation proof against all evil acids.

The extraordinary natural beauties of the Hudson have made its shores so much coveted for country retreats, as to exclude therefrom, in a great degree, the humbler and poorer classes of the people; but happily for them, there remain other still enviable, if less imposing,

through all our present voyage to the Tappan Sea, are as yet quite unoccupied by suburban homes. They can hardly, however, be much longer thus neglected, with the superb and far-reaching sites which they afford-sites rugged and sterile enough, certainly, as viewed from the river, but wonderfully beautiful, as looked at from the crest of the cliffs, either far off upon the winding waters, or back upon the verdant mountain terrace, sloping with long gradation down to the rich valley reaches of the Hackensack. The late opening of the Northern Railway, which follows the Hudson closely, through all the Palisade range, to Piermont on the Tappan Sea, must contribute greatly to the occupancy of this side of the river as well as the other.

This famous mountain ridge which bounds the Hudson for so many miles on the west, rises gradually near Bergen Point, opposite the metropolis, extends upward through the territory of New-Jersey for some twenty-eight miles, and yet farther within the bounds of NewYork. The more obvious line of the range begins at Fort Lee, opposite the upper end of the Island of New-York, and terminates at the Tappan Bay above. Its average width is about two miles and-a-half, with a broad summit of table land, dropping gently, as we have already said, towards the valleys of the Hackensack and the Passaic. Their river front is uniformly precipitous, and the bare rock is every where seen in that singular vertical formation, from which has come the name of the Palisades. The upper half of the average elevation of five to six hundred feet, is this perpetual wall of Trap Rock, covered with heavy forest growth, and sloping, still precipitously, through the lower half, to the water's edge. This lower and more inclined section

is usually covered with rich verdure, except where the quarrying operations, carried on here and there, have stripped off the trees, and exposed the rugged earth in the likeness of a ruthless land-slide. Near the base of the Palisades there generally are, though one would hardly suspect it from the appearance, en passant, little terraces, broad enough for gardens and even for liliputian farms. These oases are well exploited, and all along are seen humble huts and cottages nestled at the base of the cliffs, with now and then a hamlet of respectable size, with its dock and craft, and its unsuspected road up to the summit of the hills.

With the solitary Palisades thus on the one hand, and the smiling, thickly-settled hill-slopes on the other, the river flowing in broad expanse between, we continue our voyage upward from the winning aside of the Spyt den Duivel. The next railway station beyond, is that of Riverdale. Here access is afforded to a charming settlement, and to the grand edifice near by which lifts its lofty towers so conspicuously before us. These towers are a new feature in the river landscape, having grown up as towers do here, like Aladdin's castle, almost in a night. They are a part of the yet scarcely-completed structure of the Catholic school of Mount St. Vincent - the Mother House of the Sisters of Charity and Academy of Mount St. Vincent, as the institution is more formally styled. This, spot has long been an object of curious interest to the Hudson voyager, as Fonthill, the seat of the eminent tragedian, Edwin Forrest. The present proprietors purchased the estate, all but some forty acres, which Mr. Forrest yet retains, about two years ago. Since that time the new edifice has arisen in close proximity to the old 'castle,' and quite belittling it, by its superior dimensions. Mr. Forrest's house is an excellent example of the English castellated style of architecture. It is most substantially constructed of stone, and from its congregation of towers, especially from the highest-the flag or stair tower-which rises seventy-one feet above the base, most charming pictures of the river above and below are obtained. The