Niagara Falls 



it, and to listen to it, and remember it forever. But when you 

 see this, you feel at once, this is Niagara ; the eye that could com- 

 mand the hand has seen it at last, and the future pictures of the 

 Cataract may be different — they cannot be superior to this. 



The view selected is the simplest and most comprehensive. 

 The spectator stands a little above Table Rock, and the eye looks 

 along the level of the rapids, seeing them toss and curl against 

 the sky and horizon, and the spectator understands why it is called 

 an ocean pouring itself away. The foreground is the swift, 

 shattered water of the shallow shore — rapids gliding to the brink 

 of the Fall which forms the Canada side of the Horse-Shoe, and 

 the middle of the canvas is filled with the plunge of the main sheet 

 into the abyss. It is all water, except a shore of Goat Island upon 

 the left, and the long, low, woody Canada shore upon the right. 

 Over all shines a transparent summer sky, with a dull, distant 

 thunder mist beyond Goat Island, and soft, peaceful clouds over 

 Canada. A rainbow springs from the abyss; but it is only frag- 

 mentary, for the vapor is wafted aside and broken. This rainbow 

 is the purest light I ever saw in painting. Turner, whose later 

 life was a long effort to produce light, and a marvellous success 

 in doing it, has nothing which seems to me so wonderful as this 

 broken rainbow of Church's. It is hard to believe that it is not a 

 reflection thrown upon the canvas from a prism. 



Will you not be surprised to hear, too, that if the young 

 American has rivaled Turner's light, he has also equaled the pre- 

 Raphaelite detail? Not as the pre-Raphaelites, but with a con- 

 scientious finish of minuteness, which does not in the least clash 

 with the broad beauty of the whole. The stones in the little 

 round tower upon the American side of the Great Fall are per- 

 fectly made out, if you will look to see; and far away upon the 

 northern shore of the rapids, the details of a country yard are 

 visible. 



But the calmness and simplicity of the picture are its charms. 

 Everybody remembers how tranquil his remembrance of the scene 

 is, and how simple its grandeur is. Niagara makes no appeal to 



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