标题: earth's aspect ]may exhibit [打印本页] 作者: ff88egab 时间: 2012-4-5 17:03 标题: earth's aspect ]may exhibit
[BR]earth's aspect ]may exhibit
[BR]Burgoyne, in the invasion of 1777, found means to drag cannon to its summit, an enterprise which till then had been deemed impossible. Ticonderoga fell, and has never since been of any military importance: the sheep now browse among the crumbling walls, and hear no sound save the echo of their own bleating : the steam-boat dashes through the waters at their base without arousing the thunders of the mighty fortress. America has its ruins; but while they exhibit only the arts of peace triumphant over war, they may be contemplated without any saddening emotions.The voyage down Lake Champlain exhibits many fine views. This lake has not the clear waters nor the romantic shores of Lake George, yet it admits of wider prospects both of water and land. On both sides high mountains appear at Coach Factory Store a distance from the shores, and the banks are adorned with villages. The clayey soil of the shores produces a white and turbid water in the southern part of the lake, but on proceeding north it becomes clear. The chain of mountains on both shores continued in sight as we sailed down the lake, and the sun set behind the western ridge, covering them with a dim, misty, blue mantle, that contrasted finely wilh the fresh green of the shores. The shades of night came over us while we were still at sea; but after a few hours' sail, the .appearance of a light-house ahead announced our approach to the harbour of Burlington. This town stands on a high bank on the eastern shore of the lake, and commands a grand view of its waters and the western shore, with the Coach Factory Outlet lofty mountains beyond.Journeying easterly from this place, the country is found to be wilder than the western part of Massachusetts, but the farms are under good cultivation The Green Mountains enchant the eye with their variegation of surface, and the bright freshness of their verdure. A narrow pass, called the Gulf, offers a striking scene : here the mountain is cloven down to the base, almost perpendicularly, for about three miles on either hand. These immense walls of rock are everywhere overgrown with trees, and the traveller, as he passes through, is struck with astonishment to behold enormous oaks, some hundred feet over his head, growing' out of the perpendicular sides of these rocky barriers, which appear like immense sheets of foliage stretched out on both sides. The narrowness of this passage is such, that in many places the road is overhung by the rocky wall: the sun shines into it only for a short space during the day, and in the heat of a summer noon the air of the Gulf is chilling.A handful of houses in the midst of these mountains bears the name of Montpelier, and the title of the capital Vermont. It is as unpretending a metropolis as is perhaps anywhere to be found ; but the Vermonters are distinguished for their republican simplicity : the governor of the state does not think it scorn to drive his own team; indeed, the salary of this magistrate is not Coach Outlet Online such as to encourage any unnecessary splendour, and the office has frequently gone a begging. Political ambition is not likely to disturb the happy repose of these honest mountaineers. Nor is their ' golden mean' of property less secure. Here are no rich men, as the Englishman would count riches ; no enormous heaps of wealth, like overgrown sponges, sucking up every stream of affluence within their reach, and making dryness and dearth around them. No sudden fortunes offer a temptation to cupidity and wild adventure, or disgust patient industry with its slow and sure career to competence. Riches and poverty are alike unknown, and unknown too is the corruption of morals commonly following in their train. Here is no hopeless want or sudden misfortune to engender the * circumstance, that unspiritual god and miscreator,' that helps along a vicious tendency; and where there is least temptation to crime, there will be fewest criminals.I love wild scenery ; 'tis a delight to contemplate nature out of prison, for earth's aspect ]may exhibit too much of man, and European scenery bears, to my eyes, a great deal of this character.