In one respect New York was somewhat different from what I remembered it. The gay season had passed. There were no routs, no balls, few parties of any sort; all was gravity and family seclusion. Some families had removed to the country; others were preparing for a trip to Canada or Boston. Still I had the good fortune to encounter many of my former friends, with whom I enjoyed the pleasure of renewing my intercourse.

I believe this pleasure, unsuppoited by reasons of greater cogency, made me imagine a fortnight's breathing time to be necessary, between the journey just accomplished, and that which I yet meditated to Niagara and Quebec. Nothing of any consequence, however, occurred during this interval; and as I always found the flight of time to he unusually rapid at New York, the period fixed for departure soon came.

On the 30th of May I ran up the Hudson to West Point, about fifty miles from New York, The scenery, now clad in all the verdure of summer, certainly transcended every thing I had ever seen on a scale so extensive. What struck me as chiefly admirable, was the fine proportion of the different features of the landscape. Taken separately, they were not much. Every one has seen finer rocks and loftier mountains, and greater magnificence of forest scenery, but the charm lay in the combination, in that exquisite harmony of detail which produces—if I may so write—a synthetic beauty of the highest order.