whirlpool would be hideous, compared to being dashed to death amid the dazzling spray and triumphant thunder of Niagara.

[There are but three places I have ever visited that produced upon me the appalling impression of being accursed, and empty of the presence of the God of nature, the Divine Creator, the All-loving Father:  this whirlpool of Niagara, that fiery, sulphurous, vile-smelling wound in the earth’s bosom, the crater of Vesuvius, and the upper part of the Mer de Glace at Chamouni.  These places impressed me with horror, and the impression is always renewed in my mind when I remember them:  God-forsaken is what they looked to me.]

     I do not believe this whirlpool is at all as generally visited as
     the falls, and perhaps it might not impress everybody as it did me.

Quebec, where we have been staying, is beautiful.  A fortress is always delightful to me; my destructiveness rejoices in guns and drums, and all the circumstance of glorious war.  The place itself, too, is so fiercely picturesque—­such crags, such dizzy, hanging heights, such perpendicular rocky walls, down to the very water’s edge, and such a broad, bright bay.  The scenery all round Quebec is beautiful, and we went to visit two fine waterfalls in the neighborhood, but of course to us just now there is but one waterfall in the world....  God bless you, dear!

Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. K.

TO MRS. JAMESON.

NEW YORK, Tuesday, October 15, 1833.

You are wandering, dear Mrs. Jameson, in the land of romance, the birthplace of wild traditions, the stronghold of chivalrous legends, the spell-land of witchcraft, the especial haunt and home of goblin, specter, sprite, and gnome; all the beautiful and fanciful creations of the poetical imagination of the Middle Ages.  You are, I suppose, in Germany; intellectually speaking, almost the antipodes of America.  Germany is now the country to which my imagination wanders oftener than to any other.  Italy was my wishing land eight years ago, but many things have dimmed that southern vision to my fancy, and the cloudier skies, wilder associations, and more solemn spirit of Germany attract me more now than the sunny ruin-land....

I shall not return to England, not even to visit it now—­certainly never to make my home there again.  “The place that knew me will know me no more,” and you will never again have the satisfaction of coming to me after a first night’s new part to say all manner of kind things about it to me.  My feelings about the stage you know full well, and will rejoice with me that there is a prospect of my leaving it before its pernicious excitements had been rendered necessary to me by habit.  Yet when I think of my “farewell night,” I cannot help wishing it might have taken place in London, before my own people, who received my first efforts so kindly, and where I stood in the very footprints, as it were, of my kindred....