Preservation of the Falls 



It was a characteristic trait of the poetic superstitution of 1885 

 Greece to personify the visible forms of nature in a spirit of ar,er 

 peculiar sympathy and tenderness. Into what a sublime Pantheon 

 would Greek imagination have converted a scene like Niagara! 

 An abode for every divinity, with the Great Thunderer himself 

 in the midst shaking "his ambrosial curls! " A more spiritual 

 as well as philosophic faith has dispelled these fond illusions; 

 but poetry is still left to sing her sweet lament over a disenchanted 

 world. 



" The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 

 The fair humanities of old religion, 

 The power, the beauty and the majesty 

 That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain. 

 Or forest by slow stream or pebbly spring, 

 Or chasms and watery depths, all these have vanished. 

 They live no longer in the faith of reason." 



The modern world, with its restless industrial activities, may, 

 perhaps, be less responsive to the inspirations of nature; but it 

 is for the reason that the sensibilities are less awake, not that the 

 voices are silenced. Nature addresses all ages in the same lan- 

 guage, which the heart of man can understand without the aid 

 of a mythology. 



" The word unto the prophet spoken 



Was writ on tables yet unbroken. 

 The word by seers or seraphs told 



In groves of oak or fanes of gold, 

 Still floats upon the morning wind, 



Still whispers to the willing mind." 



Our work to-day is to restore a neglected oracle; to manifest 

 our sense of the pre-eminent importance of this miracle of nature 

 as a teacher — a source of every softening and elevating influ- 

 ence — to leave its own creative powers to reproduce its original 

 majesty, and to throw wide open its beautiful gates, that all, of 

 whatever race or clime, may enter in. 



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