been wading along the farther shore, drinking the cool water, and nibbling the long grass that skirts the bank, and lazily beating off the flies, you are sauntering up Broadway, or, perhaps, have just returned from a stroll in Union Park, and are wooing the sea breeze, that, entering the city at the Battery, is gently diffusing itself through every street and alley. Ah, that sea breeze is the only salvation of New York. After a hot, panting day, when the fiery pavements and red brick walls have concentrated and redoubled the heat, how refreshingly, and like a good angel, comes that, at first slight, but gradually increasing seawind, to the fevered system. Moist from its long dalliance with the salt waves, its kiss is soft and welcome as that of a I beg your pardon, I meant to say, as a doctor once remarked to me, "it is a very pleasant stimulant." Yet I know Broadway is looking like a furnace just cooled off; and with all your windows and doors thrown open, you are still languid, while a sultry and oppressive night awaits you. I pity you from my heart; you have been in Wall street the whole of this scorching day, and have not drawn a breath below your

throat, for the air you live on was never made for the

lungs.

.

You are pale and exhausted, while now and then comes over you, a sweet vision of rushing streams and waving tree tops, and cool floods of air. I see you in imagination, flung at full length upon the sofa, and hear that expression of impatience which escapes your lips. But here it is delicious-my lungs heave freely and strongly, and every moment refreshes instead of enervates me. Before me spreads away this beautiful lake, shaped like a tea leaf, while all along the green shores and up the greener mountain side, there is a barely perceptible motion among the leaves, as if they were so many living things stirring about upon a carpet of velvet. Farther on, the Adirondack Pass lifts its startling cliff into the air, and farther still the solemn mountains stand bathed in the splendor of the departing sun. The placid surface before me is now and then broken by the leap of a trout as some poor fly ventures too near where he swims-but all else is still and calm. Oh, that I could catch the shadows of thoughts and feelings that flit over me. There is an atmosphere of beauty around my spirit, that fills me with a thousand sweet but vague visions.

There is something I would grasp and retain, but cannot—would speak, but have not the power to utter it. The soul is powerless to act and,

"Dizzy and drunk with beauty, reels

In its fullness."

Just look at the glorious orb of day as it rolls down that distant mountain slope, into the gorge which seems made on purpose to receive it. Lower and and lower sinks the fiery circle, till at last it disappears, leaving an ocean of flame where it stood, while dark shadows begin to creep over the lake and shores. On the mountains, there is a bright line of light which slowly ascends as if striving to linger around the loveliness below. Inch by inch it creeps upward, growing brighter as it rises, till at length the highest summit is reached-irradiated and forsaken. Its last baptism was on that bald peak which blazed up a moment like an altar-fire to God, then sunk in darkness-and now the pall of night is slowly drawn over all.

Thus, my friend, did this July evening pass with me, and with a sigh over the gorgeous dream that had vanished, I turned away. Though the night was

lovely with its stars and sky, which seemed doubly brilliant in contrast with the black mountain masses that shut out half the heavens; yet the dash of a stream over its broken channel, and the hoot of the distant owl conspired to give a loneliness to the scene the former could not enliven. I thought of home, and those I loved-of life and its lights and shadows-of death and its deeper mysteries of the far world beyond the stars, and that "palace" to which "even the bright sun itself is but a porch lamp."

But these reveries will not fit me for to-morrow's toil, and so good-night to you.

Yours truly.