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The Wonderful Falls

The Wonderful Falls image
Parent Issue
Day
29
Month
April
Year
1881
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Bernhardt's visit reoently to Niágara, and the impressions she is said to have re ceived on viewing the great cataract, have recalled incideuts associatcd with other visita made to the falls by notable personajes froni abroad, who have found expression of iln.ir .!.¦.( emotiou at beholding the sublime spectacle in all its grandeur and realily in words which have become historie. With her exquisite concept ion of the truly sublimo and beautiful in nature as well as art, MUe. Bernhardt did not fail to find, as had other.s before her, ampie subs'ance fur her admiration. An eye-witness says: ''Mlle. Bernhardt was spellbound for a moment at the scène, as she alighted f'roin the carriage and stood on the veranda of the hotel, and turned her gaze on the mighty cataract. She stood alone, away from the party, and seemed to take in the whole view, givtng vent to her feelings by exclaiming in broken Knglisli, 'Beautiful,' 'grand,' 'magnificent.' " When in 1850 Jenny Lind viaited Niágara falls she was so overeóme at the awful grandeur of the scène that, all unconscious of the orowd that had followed o see her, she feil on her knees with clasped hands, and raising her tearful eyes to heaven, sobbed out in broken English this touching little prayer: "Almighty God, with Thou be pleased to ciOpt my }ipirfolt nl mout ftiah tul thanks for allowing me to look upon this, one of Thy greatest works. lts creation tells us there is a God, and if there is an unbelieyer on the face of the earth be pleased to bring him forth and show bim this wonderful work of Thine. " On the occasion of the visit of the Princesa Louise and Lord Lome to Niágara in January, 1879, her royal highness forgot, at least for the moment, her own consequence in tbe presence of the impressiye spectacle before her, exclaiming, when in full view of the falls, "How quite toolovely I Don't speak. Let me drink in the whole scène." Shesubsequently remarked, "I never have nor never shall see such a grand sight again. Vuat I would have missed had I not seen it 1 " Toni Moore, it w said, wrote to his mother from Geneva, N. Y., when in thiscountry in 1804, siving an account of the impressions made upon him on viewing the great cataract. "I have just seen the falls,' ' writes the poet, "and aai all raptures and amazement. Never shall I forget the impression. I feit as thougb approaching the abode of the Deity. The tears started to my eyes, and I remained for awhile in that deliciouN absorption which piousenthusiasm alone can produce. We must have new combinations of language to describe the falls of Niágara," Dean Stanley viewed the falls in 1878, and saw with sympathetic eye the true meaning of the vast and restless torrent of existenoe here. He said : "When I first stood before the cataraot of Niágara, it seemed to me that the scène whieh I witnessed was not an unapt likuness ot the fortunes of America. It was midnight; the moon was full, and I saw from the vast bridge which spans the river the ceaseless contortion, whirl and chaos which burst forth in clouds of foam from that central chasm which divides the American from the Britisb dominion, and as I looked on that ever changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, it seemed an emblem of the fermenting, perplexed, bewildering aotivity, the ceaseless, restless, beating Whirlpool of existence, in the United States. Hut in the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the falla themselves - silent, majestic, iinraova ble. That .silver column, glittering in the tnoonlight, Mee mud an iiuaee of the future of American history - of the upward beaveu aspiring destiny whieh shouli emerge from the distractions of the pres ent." In a grapliic account of his imprcssion of Niágara, William Black wrote, in one o the Brjfish magazines, a few years ago 'To have seen the sight once is a thing k be remembered during a man 's lifetitne - an experience that perhaps few of u would care to repeat. Was this strange unrest, then, a sensation of fear ? Du we shrink from the first shock of a sigh that might be too terrible in ita majesty ?'

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Courier
Old News