The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-12-26 00:00:00

MR. PIINSHON ON NIAGARA.

The Rev. NV. M. Punnhon, now in America, who is
contributing a series of letters to the Methodist Recorder,
thus speaks of this grand phenomenon of nature :
On my way from Buffalo to Toronto I caught the first
sight of that wondrous vision which it is worth a pilgrimage
from England to see. I have since had an opportunity id
making it a study, and my conviction is, that if there is
anything, in the world which defies at once description and
analysis, and a filch excites in the beholder by turns ideas of
grandeur, beauty, terror, newer, sublimity, it is expressed
in that one word "Niagara" I have men it in most of its
summer aspects. I have gazed upon the marvellous
panorama from the Rapids above, to the "whirlpool,"
three miles below. I have looked up to it groin the river,
and down upon it from the Terrapin Tower. I have bathed
in its light. and been drenched with its spray. I have
dreamed over it through the hot afternoon, and have heard
it thunder in the watches of the night. On all the head.
lands, and on all the islands, I have stood entranced and
wondering while the mist has shrouded it, and while the Olin
has broken it into rainbows. I have seen it fleecy as the
snow-sake ileetnning into the brightest emerald ; dark and
leaden as the angriest November sky—but in all its moods
there is instruction, aoleinnity, delight. Stable in its
perpetual instability ; changeless In its everlasting
; x thing to be " pondered in the heart," like
the Revelation by the meek Virgin of old : with no
pride in the brilliant hues which are woven in its eternal
loom with no haste in the majestic roll of its water.:
with no weariness in its endless psalm ; it remains
through the eventful years an embodiment of uncon•
mious power, a lively inspiration of thought and poetry, and
worship—a magnificent apocalypse of God. One wonderful
thing about Niagara is, that it survives all attempts to make
it common. Like all show places, it has its Arab hordes—
Bedouins 01 the road, of the caravansary, of the river. All
along the line. from the burning spring to the negro touters,
who press upon you that "there in no charge for the charm-
ing view," and down to the spot where, with sublime con-
tempt of nature anti indifference to truth, a notice-board
announces that "The whirlpool is closed on Sundays,"
Niagara is a grand institution tor slaking people pay. Of
course, also, it is the excursion terminus for all the country
round, and during the season attracts crowds that would
make Wordsworth no angry as when he denounced the rail-
way which wits to profane his own sylph-haunted ItYdal—bet
these cannot vulgarise it—rather it ennobles them, kindling
in the most insensate breast an awe 0.1111 a rapture of which
they had hardly thought themselves capable before. I have
yet to see it by moonlight, and in winter, tinier the com-
bined influence of these two conditions it must be grand
imleed. I calinnt even confess to the disappointment which
so many affirm to be the first feeling of the nand im the
sight if it. I was deeply impressed with it at the first,
and all after experience has but deepened my delight and
wonder.