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THE KNICKERBOCKER.

VOL. XXII. SEPTEMBER, 1843. No. 3.




THOUGHTS AT NIAGARA.

    'THERE'S nothing great or bright, thou glorious Fall!
    Thou may st not to the fancy's sense recall.' MORPETH.


NUMBERS have labored to describe this imposing spectacle, but no
pen can exhaust the subject, or do full justice to its grandeur.
It is great, indescribable, mighty; and the sensations it produces
are indefinite, confused, and wholly unlike and above the emotions
raised by other scenes and other causes. It would be presumption
to offer a description; although the image of the passing moment
is so deeply fixed in the mind, that all else can be dismissed at
pleasure, and the imagination conduct us, as often as we will, to a
seat on Table-Rock where we can again see the dashing waters roll up
in billows above the verge, then gliding over, literally tumble into
myriads of particles before they are lost in the rising spray.

One idea impressed me strongly, while enjoying this triumph of
Nature's eccentricities; that the Canada Fall was to the American
as Great Britain to the United States. Both of the same majestic
pattern, equally lofty, created by the same stream, and side
by side; but the former more powerful, more irresistible, more
overwhelming; while the latter possesses another kind of beauty,
less angry, less furious, less threatening, but yet grand and
magnificent, and, take away the other fall, incomparable.

Undoubtedly in ages past this mighty tide rolled over in an unbroken
sheet; but having worn away in a slow retreat to its present
position, a rock unyielding and immovable separated the stream into
two unequal divisions; and, judging from the past, the future would
seem to forewarn changes equally great. The Canada Fall, however,
can gain nothing by the wearings of time. It can have no larger
proportion, no higher ledge; but on the other hand, some shifting
rock, some rupture in the bed of the river above, may direct the
larger share into the American channel, and the relative character
of the two be reversed.

The comparison to some extent will hold of the two governments.
Our ancestors were common. The same language, the same literature,
and the same religion supplied, and continues to supply us both;
and although a rock impassable has divided us, we continue in
civilization to stand side by side. Great Britain, however,
stretches her dominion through the world. The channel of her power
is deeper, and its full current sweeps along with irresistible
force. She has attained her full meridian, and stands forth the
mammoth power of the present age; with her ensign unfurled to every
breeze, and her ambassadors upon every isle. She draws within her
influence 'earth's remotest bounds;' but, if we rightly estimate
the indications of the times, her political meridian has no higher
degree; and when she moves from her present position, it is even
more probable that she will 'hasten to her setting' than be borne
along in her present attitude by the shifting currents of time.

Our republic, in contrast with it, presents the figure of aspiring,
expanding youth, and vigorous age. The youth of the parent stock;
but, being educated in a different school, and upon another
soil, and having shaped out a separate course, founded upon the
experience of the past, has formed juster estimates of the dignity
and independence of man; of his social immunities; of his inborn
liberty; of his equality of right with all mankind; and of his
constituting a part of the national sovereignty, rather than its
appendage. His free-born genius has unfolded while struggling for
these essential principles; and guided by their inspiration, he
stretches forward in the career of intellectual and moral expansion,
promising ere long to excel immeasurably the sturdy parent, whose
genius is encumbered by prejudice, aristocracy, and regalism, and
blunted by long and arduous toil.

Unlike the two Falls in extent, neither Great Britain, nor any
civilized nation, possesses such a valuable, continuous, and
available territory as constitutes the American republic. It
reaches, with hill and plain, river and mountain, from ocean