day to remarkable size and luxuriance. It has the appearance of a town roofed in with leaves; and it is commonly said, that, but for the spires, a bird flying over would scarce be aware of its existence. Nothing could be more beautiful than the effect of this in the streets; for, standing where any of the principal avenues cross at right angles, four embowered aisles extend away as far as the eye can follow, formed of the straight stems and graceful branches of the drooping elm, the most elegant and noble of the trees of our country. The roads below are kept moist and cool with the roof overhead; the side-walks, between the trees and the rural dwellings, are broad and shady; the small gardens in front of most of the houses are bright with flowering shrubs; and the whole scene, though in the midst of a city, breathes of nature.

The style of domestic architecture in New Haven favours the rural character of the town. Built, as was remarked before, in the midst of a garden, each house looks like what would be termed in England a cottage, or, in streets where a more ambitious style prevails, like the sort of white villa common at watering places. The green Venetian blind is universal; the broad, open hall extends through the house, showing the gay alley of a garden in the rear; and, living in the midst of a primitive and friendly community, the inhabitants sit at their low windows along the street, or promenade, without fear of rude observation, on the shady pavement before their dwellings, preserving for the place altogether that look of out-of-doors life and gaiety which, with less elegance, distinguishes Naples and other cities of southern Europe. The prettiest of English rural towns have a general resemblance to it.

In the centre of New Haven were originally laid out two open squares, divided by a street kept sacred from private buildings. The upper green is a beautiful slope, edged with the long line of the college edifices. Between the two squares stand three churches, at equal distances; two of the common order of architecture for places of public worship in this country (immense brick buildings, with tall white spires); and a third, which is presented in the drawing, a Gothic episcopal church, of singular purity and beauty. Behind and before it, spread away the verdant carpets of the two enclosed “greens;” above its turret and windows hang the drooping fans of elms, half disclosing and half concealing its pointed architecture; and to its door, from every direction, tend aisles of lofty trees, overhanging the paths with shadow, as if the first thought of the primitive settlers had been to create visible avenues to the house of God. There is scarce a more beautiful place of worship, take it all in all, in the whole of Christendom.

The trees in the magnificent avenue in front of these churches were planted by a single individual, the Hon. James Hillhouse. His example decided the character of the town, for it was followed in every street. To the enterprise of the same public-spirited gentleman, New Haven owes one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world. The square in the rear of the churches was formerly, according to the English custom, used as a churchyard, and encumbered with graves, which soon threatened to overrun its limits. Mr. Hillhouse, some years since, purchased a field in the western skirt of the town, laid it out and planted it, and subsequently removed to it all the tombstones and remains from the Green; among them the headstone of the regicide Goffe. It is now one of the most beautiful of burial-places. The monuments are of white marble, or of a very rich verd antique found in the neighbourhood; and the natural elegance of the place has induced a taste and elegance into these monuments for the dead, found in no other spot of the same character.

The interior of the episcopal church is purely Gothic, and esteemed in the best taste. The material of the exterior is a brownish trap-rock from the neighbouring mountains, which, from its colour, resembles a very weather-beaten and time-worn stone, and gives a look of antiquity to the edifice. The cornices and abutments are of what a distinguished writer on the subject calls a sprightly freestone.

NIAGARA FALLS,

(FROM THE TOP OF THE LADDER ON THE AMERICAN SIDE.)

This is often the first near and general view of the Falls, and it is well calculated to produce the most astonishing impression on any one suddenly introduced to it. Supposing him to have arrived from Lockport, by a tedious progress through the forests, the visitor is conducted through a beautiful wood, presenting scenery of the softest character. But, with the roar of the cataract in his ear, he hurries rapidly through, till he stands on the very verge of the Fall, at the point where its mighty waters descend in one solemn unbroken mass into a gulf of spray, rising in clouds from the tortured waves beneath, and driven about by the gusts, till sometimes the whole river beneath, and the opposite shores, are momentarily concealed. As this misty curtain is withdrawn, the whole scene is disclosed. Beyond the American fall, which is immediately before him, and the wooded steeps of Goat Island, he sees the sublime curve of the Horse-shoe Fall; from below the centre of which, where the greatest mass of water descends, arises a tall and beautiful column of silvery vapour far into the sky.

At this spot is the entrance of the long covered ladder by which the descent to the ferry is accomplished. At an opening in it, half way down the precipice, people usually stop (in spite of their hurry, and that absorbing matter, the care of their baggage) to enjoy the only view, perhaps, which brings them near to the falling column in the midst of its descent. It is, indeed, “horribly beautiful.” No one has better described the effect sometimes produced on the mind at Niagara, than Basil Hall.

“On Sunday night, the 8th of July, we returned to the Falls, and walked down to the Table Rock, to view them by moonlight. Our expectations, as may be supposed, were high, but the sight was more impressive than we had expected. It possessed, it is true, what may be called a more sober kind of interest than that belonging to the wild scene behind the sheet of water above described. I may mention one curious effect:—it seemed to the imagination not impossible that the Fall might swell up, and grasp us in its vortex. The actual presence of any very powerful moving object is often more or less remotely connected with a feeling that its direction may be changed; and when the slightest variation would evidently prove fatal, a feeling of awe is easily excited. At all events, as I gazed upon the cataract, it more than once appeared to increase in its volume, and to be accelerated in its velocity, till my heated fancy became strained, alarmed, and so much over-crowded with new and old images,—all exaggerated; and in spite of the conviction that the whole was nonsense, I felt obliged to draw back from the edge of the rock; and it required a little reflection, and some resolution, to advance again to the brink.

“During the delightful period that the Falls formed our head-quarters, we made various excursions to several interesting objects in the neighbourhood. Of these, the most amusing were, a trip to Buffalo, a flourishing American town at the eastern end of Lake Erie, where the great New York canal commences; and a visit to the Welland canal, which joins Lake Erie with Lake Ontario.”