Preservation of the Falls 



With this postponement comes, I think, an immediate decline 1871 

 of expectation; for there is every appearance that the spectacle James 

 you have come so far to see is to be choked in the horribly vulgar 

 shops and booths and catch-penny artifices which have pushed 

 and elbowed to within the very spray of the Falls, and ply their 

 importunities in shrill competition with its thunder. You see a 

 multitude of hotels and taverns and stores, glaring with white 

 paint, bedizened with placards and advertisements, and decorated 

 by groups of those gentlemen who flourish most rankly on the soil 

 of New York and in the vicinage of hotels ; who carry their hands 

 in their pockets, wear their hats always and every way, and, 

 although of a stationary habit, yet spurn the earth with their heels. 

 A side-glimpse of the Falls, however, calls out your philosophy; 

 you reflect that this may be regarded as one of those sordid fore- 

 grounds which Turner liked to use, and which may be effective as 

 a foil; you hurry to where the roar grows louder, and, I was 

 going to say, you escape from the village. In fact, however, you 

 don't escape from it; it is constantly at your elbow, just to the 

 right or the left of the line of contemplation. It would be paying 

 Niagara a poor compliment to say that, practically, she does not 

 hurl away this chaffering by-play from her edge ; but as you value 

 the integrity of your impression, you are bound to affirm that it 

 suffers appreciable abatement from such sources. You wonder, 

 as you stroll about, whether it is altogether an unrighteous dream 

 that with the slow progress of taste and the possible or impossible 

 growth of some larger comprehension of beauty and fitness, the 

 public conscience may not tend to confer upon such sovereign 

 phases of nature something of the inviolability and privacy 

 which we are slow to bestow, indeed, upon fame, but which we 

 do not grudge at least to art. We place a great picture, a great 

 statue, in a museum: we erect a great monument in the centre of 

 our largest square, and if we can suppose ourselves nowadays to 

 build a cathedral, we should certainly isolate it as much as pos- 

 sible and expose it to no ignoble contact. We cannot enclose 

 Niagara with walls and a roof, nor girdle it with a palisade ; but 



1095 



