wise, there is yet a very sensible recession. It is a well-known fact, which goes to confirm the same opinion, that the American fall is constantly growing more and more curved in its outline. In 1678, Father Henepin visited Niagara, and made a drawing of it, which Mr. Hall has kindly furnished us with in his report. It is, to be sure, something of the rudest, but it yet serves to show that a manifest and important change has taken place in the whole appearance and contour of the falls. How great this change has been it is impossible to estimate. It is sufficient for the argument to know that any change has occurred. To put the truth of the matter to test, Mr. Hall, by Governor Seward's direction, caused a trigonometrical survey to be made of the fall, and the monuments of the survey to be properly secured on both sides of the river. A few years will be sufficient to throw some true light upon this subject. One question, which has been frequently mooted respecting Niagara, has been happily set at rest by the investigations of Mr. Lyell: Why, if the present bed of the river was worn by the river itself, did it take its present course in preference to any other? The answer is, that the stream runs along the bottom of an ancient valley, formed doubtless like many other similar valleys by the agency of water, long before the continent had so far risen from its native bed as to have given birth to the thousand water courses, and the great lakes among them which intersect its surface. The proof of this lies not altogether in the topographical appearance of the country, but in the fact, that in the earthy portions of the banks of the ravine, at the bottom of which is the river's bed, and upon Goat Island, and upon the platform on either side, there exist, at heights above the water, diminishing as you go towards Lake Erie, fresh water shells of modern genera, indeed resembling those now found in the lakes above and below. The evidence is complete that ere Niagara was, a fresh water sea existed in the basin which now forms its bed. The river occupied it because it afforded it a proper channel, but the valley existed before the river. Since that distant period, a river has graded for itself a path through solid stone, from twelve to twenty hundred feet wide, and from three to five hundred deep! But now the sublime inquiry presents itself: How long has been this period? How long since Niagara commenced thundering? How long the time it has consumed in moving backwards from Lake Ontario to its present position? Alas, we look in vain for an answer. Niagara may be a chronometer, but its dial is engraved in characters defying more than a Champollion's skill to decypher. It might, at first sight, seem easy enough, knowing the recession for any given time, to compute the time required to recede seven miles; but farther reflection dispels the illusion. We know that the cataract has diminished in height since it commenced; for considerations of a geological and topographical character render it certain, that when it was at Lewistown it could not have been less than 350 feet in height; it has gradually diminished till now. Strata which, when it commenced, formed its base, have disappeared or dipped beneath those rocks over which it now pours. The stream itself may have altered in size. In some parts of its channel it has manifestly formed a narrower cataract than it now forms; in others, a wider. In every part of its course, the character of the rock upon which its force has been spent, has continually changed. It now consists of about sixty feet of very thick bedded limestone, (of the Niagara group,) which forms the upper part of the fall, and of about the same amount of shale, which forms its base, underlying and supporting the limestone. This disintegrates by the action of the spray, and wearing out, suffers the limestone to break away and fall down into the abyss below. With such data as these, upon which to found a calculation, it is only madness to attempt to compute the age of Niagara Falls. But it is a fact, that within that period, as we have already hinted, the character of the fauna of the world has scarcely changed; the same animals having peopled the fresh water sea, which preceded Niagara, as now people its own waters. How brief this period, compared with that during which the entire character of the inhabitants of the globe has almost totally changed! How like a speck when looked at, in comparison with that eternity of time which has intervened since the Potsdam sandstone, with its little Singula, the first of known fossiliferous rocks, and above which not less than three miles of other fossiliferous rocks, each with its fossils, have been formed! Upraised mountains of granite and limestone were worn down by the slow tooth of age-whole seas were filled up with sandstone, and shale, and limestone, each succeeding stratum teeming with the remains of animal and vegetable life, and their animal and vegetable life frequently changing its characters. Dry land was formed; centuries of centuries could only have sufficed to produce the vegetable growth which, changed by a hundred circumstances, now constitutes the anthracite, and the coal of those vast coal fields, of the extent of which we have already spoken. What geology shows often to have happened before, now happens again; the dry land disappears, whole strata are formed above the coal; again the continent appears, icthyosauriam, pterodactylimountains formed of life, and winged reptiles start into being, hills and vallies are formed, boulders are washed from unknown regions over the whole continent; basins of fresh water, with modern shells, appear. Yesterday, as it were, Niagara commences. It thunders, but no ears hear it. It performs the functions God assigned it, but no one heeds it. Just now the Mastodon and Zenglodon trembled as they heard it. Last of all, man has begun to look at it, and wonder, forsooth, if it can be as ancient as his ancestors of the hundred and twentieth generation! We must discuss one more point, and that is, the consequence of the entire recession of the falls-the prospective condition of Niagara. Mr. Hall has shown, that thus far the fall has continually diminished in height, and that it must continue to do so. The cause of this is the southward or upward dip of the strata over which the river runs. Mr. H. estimates, that when the fall shall have receded two miles, it will then have arrived at a point where the shale, which, as has already been said, forms, for about sixty feet in height, the bottom of the escapement over which is the fall, will have entirely disappeared beneath the water. Here the recession must be almost stopped, for the action of the water will then be wholly spent upon the thick bedded limestone, which is now not worn away, but undermined by the underlying shale, which will then be protected from the agencies which now act upon it. Four or five miles of retrogradation will bring the limestone below the water; and then, if the rock-a very thin bedded limestone-which now forms the rapids above the falls, continues to maintain its present condition, the cataract of Niagara will have ceased to exist-a precipitous rapid being all that is left of it. Some persons have feared, that when this has occurred, the sudden wearing away of these rapids must drain Lake Erie, and deluge those portions of New-York and Canada bordering Lake Ontario. But such visions are chimerical. Even if all Lake Erie were to be poured constantly into Lake Ontario, it would only raise it one hundred and fifty feet above its present level. Enough, surely. But, for obvious reasons, this drainage, even if it ever occur, must be slow and gradual. But before it countless ages must intervene. The Great Lakes, from the clearing up of the forests and the cultivation of the regions whence they derive their waters, must diminish in size, and a thousand silent and unlooked-for geological changes may alter the whole face of the continent. TO THE HUDSON. I. FLOW on, flow on, thou rock-girt sea! Smooth as the plain, though mountain-born, II. Child of the Highlands, around thee lie Deep o'er the wave where sleeps the Pole; III. Sweet stream! how oft, when evening sun How oft I've gazed, and deemed the while, A scene so beautiful and bright. IV. Gay streamed its rays on flood and fell, V. Grim smiled old Putnam's storied towers, VI. But fell its rays most cheerly, where And Barbor, generous and brave, Gained wreaths that decked his soldier's grave, VII. Nor can ye give, West Point, to fame, Deep drunk of Mexan blood his steel. VIII. Child of the Hills, no lovelier stream Child of the Highlands, flow on, flow on. THE PLEASURES OF THE PEN. "Those ever-blooming sweets, which, from the store To charm the enlivened soul."-Akenside. "POETRY," says Elizabeth Barrett, " is its own exceeding great reward!" and another recent writer, we believe, has something like the following :"The love of knowledge is in itself the attainment of knowledge. Poverty and trial discourage it in vain-they seem, on the contrary, rather to accelerate its progress. It supplies the scarcity of time by the concentration of attention, and replaces comfort by self-denial." The poverty and misfortunes of literary men have been frequently rehearsed, and the theme has employed eloquent pens and engaged the world's sympathies. Little, however, has been attempted on the other side of the question. The shades of literary life have been deepened so often as almost to have obscured whatever lights the brighter view of their circumstances may have exhibited.— That the latter do exist none can doubt, although the balance of evidence may not be found to be to a preponderating extent. D'Israeli, it will be recollected, has contrived, however, to present us with two noble tomes mainly devoted to this topic-his last work,-which he classically entitles "The Amenities of Literature," upon the authority of Pliny, who styles literary pursuits in general amanitates studiorum. Of the admirable production referred to, it being familiar to the reader, we shall not further speak-although we might well be tempted to enrich our "loose leaves" by culling some of his beautiful flowers; we must therefore content ourselves with a few preliminary thoughts, naturally suggested by the consideration of that fascinating pursuit, which Pope says "True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires." The intense sensations of pleasure derived from the cultivation of the intellect are unsurpassed by any emotions of which the humam mind is susceptible; they "grow with the growth and strengthen with the strength." Aristotle distinguished the learned and the unlearned as the living and the dead-the former as illumed by a bright firmament spangled over with shining orbs of light: the other as immured in the murky recesses of a subterranean cavern, whose unmitigated gloom is rendered impervious to the entrance of a single enlivening ray. The memorable period known as the "dark ages" of England, and that succeeding it, afford a striking illustration of this fact-an age more prolific in instances of transcendent genius than any which the world has ever beheld. The giant spirits of the classic times seemed again to have emerged on eagle-wing from the dark ignorance which had so long enshrouded the land. And seek we the evidences of the chaste and elevating pleasures superinduced by the heavenward flight of their genius, we need but to catch a glimpse of the extatic and ravishing visions of Milton's bright creations. His almost superhuman powers seemed to have soared amid the pure empyrean, inspired with the very atmosphere of the celestial world. The fact that, almost without exception, those who have espoused the literary profession, whether poor or wealthy, have done so irrespective alike of either condition, seems to attest their governing impulse to have been that of an ardent love for the ennobling pursuit itself. The smiles as well as the frowns of fortune have ever been equally abortive in their influence over a mind once devoted to the pleasures of literature and science: abundant evidence of this being afforded by the history of many of the earlier, as well as recent writers, whose works have been bequeathed to us as the legacy of all time. There must be something irresistibly attractive in poesy, though "The cause is secret-the effect is seen." How else can we account for the fact of some of her votaries, while incarcerated in loathsome dungeons, giving utterance to the sweetest strainsand, in many instances, some of which were cited in a previous essay, actually breathing out melodious numbers with their last expiring breath? Of the former class, how many might be quoted! Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller-the Herodotus of the 13th century, for instance, who, to beguile his gloomy hours, indited the record of his surprising adventures and discoveries in Asia, while incarcerated in a prison at Pisa; or like Bunyan, who, in Bedford jail penned his exquisite allegory of the " Pilgrim's Progress" Silvio Pellico, who, in his no less sad exile from the living world, gave birth to such beautiful measures; or the noble and heroic victims of state intolerance, cupidity and mistaken zeal, whose presence have shed a halo of radiance round the horrors of the Tower of London, the very walls of whose dreary cells were rife with the memorials of ill-fated genius. One of these was the martyred Ticheborne, who, though he refused to connect himself with the conspiracy for the assassination of Elizabeth, was yet doomed to yield up his life on the mere suspicion of his refusal being constrained, |