Before we set out, we must know something of the sights of our own country.  At least we must see Niagara.  The great fall shows infinitely best on glass.  Thomson’s “Point View, 28,” would be a perfect picture of the Falls in summer, if a lady in the foreground had not moved her shawl while the pictures were taking, or in the interval between taking the two.  His winter view, “Terrapin Tower, 37,” is perfection itself.  Both he and Evans have taken fine views of the rapids, instantaneous, catching the spray as it leaped and the clouds overhead.  Of Blondin on his rope there are numerous views; standing on one foot, on his head, carrying a man on his back, and one frightful picture, where he hangs by one leg, head downward, over the abyss.  The best we have seen is Evans’s No. 5, a front view, where every muscle stands out in perfect relief, and the symmetry of the most unimpressible of mortals is finely shown.  It literally makes the head swim to fix the eyes on some of these pictures.  It is a relief to get away from such fearful sights and look up at the Old Man of the Mountain.  There stands the face, without any humanizing help from the hand of an artist.  Mr. Bierstadt has given it to us very well.  Rather an imbecile old gentleman, one would say, with his mouth open; a face such as one may see hanging about railway-stations, and, what is curious, a New-England style of countenance.  Let us flit again, and just take a look at the level sheets of water and broken falls of Trenton,—­at the oblong, almost squared arch of the Natural Bridge,—­at the ruins of the Pemberton Mills, still smoking,—­and so come to Mr. Barnum’s “Historical Series.”  Clark’s Island, with the great rock by which the Pilgrims “rested, according to the commandment,” on the first Sunday, or Sabbath, as they loved to call it, which they passed in the harbor of Plymouth, is the most interesting of them all to us.  But here are many scenes of historical interest connected with the great names and events of our past.  The Washington Elm, at Cambridge, (through the branches of which we saw the first sunset we ever looked upon, from this planet, at least,) is here in all its magnificent drapery of hanging foliage.  Mr. Soule has given another beautiful view of it, when stripped of its leaves, equally remarkable for the delicacy of its pendent, hair-like spray.

We should keep the reader half an hour looking through this series, if we did not tear ourselves abruptly away from it.  We are bound for Europe, and are to leave via New York immediately.

Here we are in the main street of the great city.  This is Mr. Anthony’s miraculous instantaneous view in Broadway, (No. 203,) before referred to.  It is the Oriental story of the petrified city made real to our eyes.  The character of it is, perhaps, best shown by the use we make of it in our lectures, to illustrate the physiology of walking.  Every foot is caught in its movement with such suddenness