ridge to two hours. But here we found the greatest difficulty of the whole excursion. The slope was not very steep; for a mile or more, the bottom of the ravine was rather a gradually retreating stairway of

enormous

boulders; and, as an Irishman remarked

in ascend

ing the

cone of Mount Washing

The huge rocks were piled in the most eccentric confusion; crevasses, sometimes twenty and thirty feet deep and spanned with moss, lay in wait for the feet; thickets of scrub spruces and junipers overgrew these boulders, and made the most sinewy opposition to our passage. Every muscle of our bodies was called into play in fighting these dwarfed and knotty regiments of evergreens.

A more thorough gymnasium for training and testing the working and enduring powers of the system, could not be arranged by art. After six hours of steady and hard climbing,-which, added to the

three of the afternoon previous, made nine hours of toil in scaling the ridge,—we gained the plateau above which the pinnacle of Adams soars. The last part of our path out lay up the eastern wall, just where it joins the left-hand cliffs; and here we had the excitement of grand rock scenery overhanging and threatening us as we climbed; while the opposite rampart, covered with green, and chan

nelled by streams into very graceful lines, responded to the blasted cliffs like Gerizim to Ebal,-the hill of blessing to the mount of cursing. One could not turn the eye from side to side, without repeating mentally the passage, strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.' "The last few rods of the passage out of the ravine led us up a narrow and smooth gateway, quite steep, and carpeted with grass. We sat

6

some time in it, looking at the rocky desolation and horror just about us, balanced by the lovely lines into which the verdure of the western ramparts was broken,—not knowing what a splendid view was in reserve for us when we should step out upon the ridge. The huge cone of Mount Madison rose before us, steep, symmetrical, and sharp, with more commanding beauty of form than any other summit of the White Hills has ever shown to my eye. We were facing the southeast when we rose out of the ravine, and were so nearly under the crest of Adams that its shape was hidden from us, and also every other summit of the range. So that there was nothing to compete with the proud proportions of the pinnacle before us.

"There are very few peaked summits in the region of the White Hills. It is even said by accurate observers, that among the Alps there are not more than five that slope steeply on all sides from pointed tops. The sharpest apex is generally supported on one side by a long line with very moderate inclination. This is the case with the spires of Jefferson and Adams, seen from the upper portion of the bridleroad on Mount Washington. Nature in the mountain-lines, as in her other departments, loves to hide her strength, refrains from startling emphasis, and veils the intensity of her forces from the senses by breadth and mass in the products, which appeal to thought and imaginative insight for recognition. The sharp drawing of mountains with very narrow bases, which we often see in pictures, is due to the fact that the artist is incompetent to suggest great height by the moderate lines that inclose vast bulk, and it is weak as caricature is feeble in contrast with portraiture, or as declamation is weak compared with the eloquence of original and practical speech. But the cone of Madison, seen from the gateway of the ravine, is not only steep, regular, and pointed, but, all other mountains being shut out, it looks immensely massive. The whole mountain has seldom looked so high from below as this bare fraction of it did, which we were gazing at from an elevation of four thousand feet on its sides. And its color

was even more fascinating than its form. It puzzled us to understand how the rounding lines of the summit, as seen from the road in

Randolph, could have been conjured into the lance-like sharpness here revealed to us. And how the light gray which it wears to a beholder in Jefferson, or the leathery brown it presents from the Glen, or the gray green which is its real tint when we go close to its rocks, could have transformed itself into the leaden lava hue in which it rose before us, was a stranger mystery. I feel sure that it was some trick of the light, like many of the sunset tints, and not the

color which the cone steadily presents. The effect was the more grand because it seemed as though nothing but batteries could have produced it. The peak looked like some proud fortification that had been stormed at with leaden shot by a park of artillery for years. Our artist was grieved that we had not more time to allow him in sketching the view.

"We all looked with longing eyes to the summit, which seemed to invite us to scale it; but the sun was already past noon, and we must reach the house on Mount Washington by dark. So we resolved to

make the ascent of Mount Adams, whose topmost rocks were still nearly a mile off from us. Between the spires of Adams and Madison on the ridge there is a pond of icy water, refreshing enough to weary climbers, and from this point another view peculiarly striking, and in itself worth the whole toil of the expedition, is gained. We are almost overhung by the lawless rocks of a subordinate peak of Mount Adams, which we called John Quincy Adams, and back of that was the profile line of the higher crest, bulging off and sweeping down into a ravine deep below the general level of the ridge. The rocks were very jagged, and at first sight nothing could seem more harsh and chaotic. Yet the view was strangely fascinating. I could not understand why the impression of beauty, even of unusual softness and meloly, should be made by such ragged desolation. And if I had never read the seventeenth chapter of Mr. Ruskin's fourth volume of Modern Painters, I might have been ignorant of the secret. We are told there that a line drawn over a great Alpine ridge, so as to touch the principal peaks that jut from it, will usually be found to be part of an unreturning or immortal curve. The grandeur of the Alpine pinnacles is bounded by that law of symmetry. And I soon saw that the precipices of Mount Adams were in subjection to the same line of grace. The jutting rocks and the seemingly lawless notchings, like the scalloping of a lovely leaf, hinted the sweep of an infinite curve. I had often found great pleasure in detecting the recurrence of a few favorite angles and forms in the chain-like lines of hills within ten miles of Mount Washington; but the revelation of this curve by the sharp edges of the cliff of Adams was not the simple perception of a pleasant fact, but the opening of my eyes to a new page in the meaning of Nature. As soon as I returned, I sought the volume I have mentioned, and I cannot refrain from quoting in this letter the passage on the 189th page, that now lies open before me, and which I have read with new interest.

"A rose is rounded by its own soft ways of growth, a reed is bowed into tender curvature by the pressure of the breeze; but we could not from these have proved any resolved preference, by Na