the Fall, where the spray is forever floating back upon the headlong wall like marble-dust wind-driven from the floor of the Great Sculptor.

There is still another element in the sublimity of the place too little noticed, or noticed only as a curiosity. This is the Profile Rock, in the edge of the American Fall nearest to Goat Island. So little is it known, that many persons go there unaware of its existence, and come away without having had it pointed out to them. Indeed, by a mere superficial looker at, and not a student of Niagara, it would be, in all probability, passed over. Were I not near-sighted, I should be ashamed to confess that I did not see it myself until my eyes were called to it by a most sincere and ardent lover of all that is noble in nature, a very near and dear friend, whom I was so fortunate as to have beside me in most of my walks.

Sustaining the weight of those vast waters upon his half-bowed head, the stony figure stands, visible under the veil, or visible at least above the waist, yet no more is needed than the face, with its look of calm endurance, to suggest for him a whole history of Fate. At that time of which I have been speaking, I myself felt enough need of fortitude to give me an intense yearning toward this emblem of heroic patience, and as I looked upon him I more and more felt myself loving him even humanly. In many a vision afterward did he appear to me as a silent consoler, when Niagara itself had become an affliction to my memory; and as side by side we stood, he under his flood, I under mine, I gathered strength from his moveless eye to bear unto the end all which should finally be given to the triumph of resignation.

Alone and unable to sleep, though the late night heard nothing to break its stillness but the ceaseless rush of the river, I felt myself thus "flowing in words” to that mute face of forbearance:

Niagara! I am not one who seeks

To lift his voice above thine awful hymn;
Mine be it to keep silence where God speaks,
Nor with my praise to make his glory dim.
Yet unto thee, shape of the stony brow,

Standing forever in thine unshared place,
The human soul within me yearneth now,
And I would lay my head beside thy face

King, from dim ages of God set apart

To bear the weight of a tremendous crown,
And feel the robes that wrap thy lonely heart

Deaden its pulses as their folds flow down;
What sublime years are written on the scroll
Of thine imperial, dread inheritance,
Man shall not read until its lines unroll

In the great hand that set thy stony trance.
Perchance thy moveless adamantine look

For its long watch o'er the abyss was bent
Ere the thick gates of primal darkness shook,
And light broke in upon thy battlement.

And when that sudden glory lit thy crown,

And God lent thee a rainbow from His throne,
E'en through thy stony breast flashed there not down
Somewhat of His joy also made thine own?

Who knoweth but He gave thee to rejoice

Till man's hymn sounded through the time to be,
And when our choral coming hushed thy voice,
Still left thee something of humanity?

Still seemest thou a priest-still the veil streams

Before thy reverent eyes, and hides His light,

And thine is as the face of one who dreams

Soon shall I pass away; the mighty psalm
Of thine o'ershadowing waters shall be heard
In memory only; but thy speechless calm

Hath lessons for me more than many a word,
Teaching the glory of the soul that bears

Great floods, a veil between him and the sun,
And, standing in the might of Patience, dares
To bide His finishing who hath begun.

I have said that Niagara itself became an affliction to me. More especially was this the case after my total abandonment of hasheesh; but I must not anticipate. Every one of sensitive mind has noticed the permanency of impressions left by grand scenery, of none more so than Niagara. Indeed, I have acquaintances who for months, in all their day-dreams as well as those of sleep, were haunted by the Falls in a manner almost like optical illusion. Their visions were always delightful. Fancy now a mind naturally very impressible by scenery, rendered numberless times more sensitive by a process which left it a perfect photographic plate, and then exposed to such lights as those reflected from that supernatural river: you will then have the condition in which I left Niagara-a condition continuing for many a month afterward. So slowly did the traces of that imagery fade on my mind, that I have never, even now, wholly lost them. At times the terrors of the brink and the cataract still echo in dreams with a hasheesh mystery, and appall me as the presence of their real danger could hardly appall.

Upon returning to a place where hasheesh was within reach, I fled to it for relief as into an ark. By considerable self-government, I conquered the tendency to

excess produced by long deprivation of the stimulus, and indulged in it within my stated boundaries only.

I now began to find that gradual was almost as difficult as instant abandonment. The utmost that could be done was to keep the bolus from exceeding fifteen grains. From ten and five, which at times I tried, there was an insensible sliding back to the larger allowance, and even there my mind rebelled at the restriction. While there was no suffering from absolute intellectual lassitude, there still, ever and anon, arose a longing more or less intense for the former music and ecstatic fantasia, which could not be satisfied by a mere panoramic display of internal images, however beautiful, dissolved in a moment by opening my eyes.

Yet I struggled strenuously against the fascination to a more generous ration, and hoped against hope for some indefinite time at which the dangerous spell might be entirely unbound.

XIX.

Resurgam.

ONE morning, having taken my ordinary dose without yet feeling its effect, I strolled into a bookseller's to get the latest number of Putnam's. Turning over its leaves as it lay upon the counter, the first article which detained my eyes was headed "The Hasheesh Eater." None but a man in my circumstances can realize the intense interest which possessed me at the sight of these words.

For a while I lingered upon them with an inexplicable dread of looking further into the paper. I shut the book, and toyed with my curiosity by examining its cover, as one who receives a letter directed in some unfamiliar hand carefully scrutinizes the postmark and the envelope, and dallies with the seal before he finally breaks it open. I had supposed myself the only hasheesh-eater upon this side of the ocean; this idea of utter isolation had been one element in many of my horrors. That some one among my acquaintance had been detailing a fragment of my own experience, as viewed by him from without, was my first hypothesis. Although, in itself considered, there was nothing very improbable in the acquirement of the habit by another person, the coincidence of my having fallen upon this article, with the hasheesh force still latent within me, seemed so remarkable that I could not believe it. Then I said to myself, I will not read this paper now. I will defer it until another time; for, if its recital be one of horrors, it may darken the complexion of my awaited vision. In pursuance of this purpose, I passed out of the shop and went down the street.

If

I was not satisfied. Whichever way I turned I was followed by a shadow of fascination. By an irresistible attraction I was drawn back to the counter. the worst were there, I must know it. I returned, and there, as before, lay the unsealed mystery. With a trembling hand I turned to the place; again I scrutinized the caption, to see if some unconscious illusion of a hasheesh state, which had ensued before I was aware, had not made objective the words which so many a day had stamped upon my brain. No; plain