Red Hill, loses the most fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable view, from a moderate mountain height, that can be gained from any eminence that lies near the tourist's path. The Mount Washington range is not visible, being barred from sight by the dark Sandwich chain, which in the afternoon, untouched by the light, wears a savage frown that contrasts most effectively with the placid beauty of the Lake below. Here is the place to study its borders, to admire the fleet of islands that ride at anchor on its bosom-from little shallops to grand three-deckers-and to enjoy the exquisite lines by which its bays are enfolded, in which its coves retreat, and with which its low capes cut the azure water, and hang over it an emerald fringe. And if one can stay there late in the afternoon, as we have stayed, and see the shadows thrown out from the island and trees, and the hues that flush the Lake's surface as the sun declines, he will be prepared to enjoy more thoroughly the description of such an hour and such a view, with which Percival has enriched American literature. Thou wert calm, Even as an infant calm, that gentle evening; Far to the south Thy slumbering waters floated, one long sheet Swelled downward, and its fleecy clouds were gay That land and water mingled, and the one Buried in vapory foam, as if a surf Heaved on its utmost shore. How deep the silence! Only the rustling boughs, the broken ripple, The cricket and the tree-frog, with the tinkle Of bells in fold and pasture, or a voice I gazed upon them, And on the unchanging lake, and felt awhile With more than filial love,-it was a joy But the beauty of the lake cannot be judged from a point so high as Red Hill. Its varied charms are not to be seen from one spot on its shore like Centre Harbor. They must be sought along all its intricate borders, among its three hundred or more islands, and in boats upon its own bosom. This is the way to find the most delightful single pictures. This is the way to study at leisure landscapes which the swift steamer allows you to see but a moment. This is the way to find delicious "bits," such as artists love for studies, of jutting rock, shaded beach, coy and curving nook, or limpid water prattling upon amethystine sand. At one point, perhaps, a group of graceful trees on one side, a grassy or tangled shore in front, and a rocky cape curving in from the other side, compose an effective foreground to a quiet bay with finely varied borders, and the doublepeaked Belknap in the distance. Or what more charming than to sail slowly along and see the numerous islands and irregular shores change their positions and weave their singular combinations? Now they range themselves on either hand, and hem a vista that extends to the blue base of Copple Crown. Now an island slides its gray or purple form, across, and, like a rood-screen, divides the long watery aisle into nave and choir, followed by another and another, till the perspective is confused and the vista disappears. Then in the distance, islands and shores will marshal themselves in long straight lines, fronting you as regular as the phalanxes of an army; and if the sun is low present the embattled effect the more forcibly, with their vertically shadowed sides and brightly lighted tops. Or the whole mountain sweeps into view, startling you with its ghostlike pallor, and haggard crest. On a morning when the fog is clearing, is the time to be tempted towards the middle of the lake, to see the islands, whose green looks more exquisite then than in any other atmosphere, stretch away in perspectives dreamy and illusive. Two or three miles of distance seem five times as long, when measured through such genial, moist, and silvery air. And now, if we will bend westward, between curving shores that will grant us ample passage, we shall be glad to find ourselves in the encircled bay near Weir's, and can have leisure to enjoy in silence the gentle slopes of the Belknaps, and the succession of mounds that heave away from them to the southeast, while the fog is rolling up into clouds, and the sunshine slipping down a broad cultivated field on one of the swelling cones, burnishes it to emerald. And towards evening we may glide down the narrow inlet around which Centre Harbor is built, and follow the shadows, while Slow up the slopes of Ossipee When they have dislodged it all, we can watch, as we return to the village, the "Procession of the Pines," which rise on the southwestern ridge that hems the cove, and be tempted to fancy, as they darken, while the saffron horizon is dying into ashy gray sky, that each of those grotesque and weird forms holds the soul of some grim old Sachem. If the shores of the Lake were lined with summer-houses, how might the charms of boating upon Winnipiseogee enrich our literature! Our readers of course know what "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" says of the privilege and pleasure of boating. "Here you are afloat with a body a rod and a half long, with arms, or wings, as you may choose to call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad |