Really you would not wish Claude or Ruysdael better lodged. I had never before seen the beautiful stream which is here tributary to the Hudson, (and on a natural gallery of which his cottage is hung, like a picture high on the wall), but, with his verbal direction, I turned at a bridge over a swift current, and followed a winding ascent along its bank. One or two mills, whose buildings, dams, and bridges are of very neat structure, give an air of utility to the outlet, but the shell-like curves and mounds of the acclivities, on either side of the winding valley, are laid out in ornamental woods and grounds; and the views back, as you ascend-(distant glimpses of the broad Hudson seen from the seclusion of this lesser stream and its verdure-are most enchanting. Fine as the Hudson is, it is finest as the middle-ground to a picture. It needs a foreground for its best effects-such a one as you get from these lovely retreating eminences with promontories on either bank. Our background, blue and misty, was the mountain range you say your own prayers up against, my dear General, when you tip your Hudson-facing chair, at Undercliff, into an attitude of devotion. (Pardon my mentioning what is behind you, at such times. To turn your back on the world is all very well, of course; but you do it with more "spiritual grace" if you first know what there was in it worth seeing.) We will come over and see Durand and his bird's-nest, together, some day.

Till I see Downing, the horticulturist, who lives within a mile or two of this bright little river (and as its nearest celebrated man, is bound to see it treated with respect), I shall vainly conjecture why one of the most romantically swift, rocky, deep-down and cascady streams in the world is robbed of its good name and belied by a false one. In the early histories, and on the county maps, this lovely watercourse is called the Quassaic River, after the Quassaic tribe of Indians, whose favorite haunt it was; but, by the people in the neighborhood, it is only known as Chambers's Creek"-a doubly misrepresenting appellation, since, in the first place, a creek is a navigable inlet of still water putting up from a bay, while the Quassaic is a rocky and pebbly rapid from one end to the other; and, in the second place, there is no propriety in changing the Indian name of a river to "Chambers's," because a person named Chambers comes to reside on its border.

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It has often occurred to me that there should be a timely and formal interest taken by American neighborhoods in the naming of their smaller lakes, fälls, rivers, and mountains. In the varied scenery of our country there is many a natural beauty, destined to be the theme of our national poetry, which is desecrated with any vile name given it by vulgar chance, while, if taken in time, a more descriptive and fitting baptism would be both pleasant and easy. Why should not neighborhoods manage this desirable object by a pic-nic, or some other agreeable shape of gathering? If a river, a "pond,” or a fall, a ravine, a valley, or a mountain, have a bad name or no name, the influential persons who reside near by, and who have frequent occasion to speak of it, might very properly call a meeting on the subject. The history of the country would, of course, be first consulted, and a name taken, if possible, from any Indian legend, stirring event, or fine action, of which the spot in question had been the scene. Failing this, the opportunity might be taken to celebrate the memory of any departed great man whose home had been near. Other reasons of choice might occur, to the committee appointed to decide; and, to make sure that the name be euphonious and poetical (which it should certainly be), the committee should be half composed of the more refined and more imaginative sex. The name once decided upon, its adoption might be the occasion of one general picnic, or of any number of private parties with excursions to the spot; or a poem might be delivered, or an oration, or (why not?) a sermon. I should be glad, indeed, if the Home Journal could suggest a usage of this kind. You will allow that it is wanted, when you take for example the most beautiful lake in the romantic highlands of the Ramapo-a resort of unsurpassed rural scenery, and within two hours of New York-and what do you think is the only name it is known by?"Nigger Pond!"

The country Post-Office, which serves, just now, as the "Bridge of Sighs" between the lofty highlands of the Hudson and the "shop" in Fulton Street—

"A palace and a prison on each hand"—

brought forth a mysterious-looking package, a day or two since, which, considering that it had been probably seventeen or eighteen centuries on the way, it was an event to receive.

DESTINY OF AN ANTIQUE.

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Last from the Bay of Naples, and "favoured by Captain Totten of the U. S. Store-ship Relief," its previous delays for centuries, and its first posting by Fate, for this destination, were, of course, not definitely decypherable. Come to hand, at last, however, the removal of sundry envelopes disclosed, first, a case with broken hinges, imbedded in which lay a beautiful antique-an elaborate intaglio gem, representing the head of old Homer. Specimen of Grecian Art as this is, and found in Pompeii, (where, of course, it was a foreign curiosity at the time of this fated city's burial in lava,) I cannot specify to what respectable contemporary of our Saviour I am indebted for its first forwarding from Athens, on this its westward destination. Whoever he was, he probably had very little idea, that, past the post-office where it would eventually be delivered, would run an electric telegraph, which could do, in seventeen minutes, the distance which this gem would not travel in less than seventeen centuries! Fancy the "direction" which a prophet who "knew the road" would have put upon this gem at starting :-From Esq., at Athens, in the year One, or thereabouts, to its Appreciator, Esq., in the Hudson Highlands, via Pompeii and the Atlantic, and to be delivered in 1850! Embarrassed as I certainly am, at present, "duly to acknowledge the receipt," of this missive so long due, I doubt whether Andrew Jackson Davies would not promise us a clairvoyant telegraph, by which we may some day track it back-from the Highlands and me, all the way to the Acropolis and its patient artist. Of the various hands through which it has since passed-from the first purchaser who despatched it from Athens to Pompeii, in the reign of Pontius Pilate, to the purchaser in the eighteenth century who officiated in the Post-Office of Fate by forwarding it thence to me-I can only name the last; and it will perhaps amuse him to accept thanks, which he, as the last link in a chain as long Anno Domini, is commissioned to pass back to those of whom he is the latest continuation!

Lieut. Flagg, of the navy, (if the above statement of facts needs reducing into a shape less explicit and more intelligible,) has most kindly remembered me, while the frigate Cumberland has been anchored in the Bay of Naples, and sends me an exquisite antique, which he found in his rambles in Pompeii. It is a head of old Homer, with his brows bound with the circlet, as he is commonly sculptured, and his sharp nose,

relaxed eye and slightly parted mouth, in the usual expression of just completed improvisation. The curling beard, high cheek bone, emaciated face and round head, are all exquisitely cut in the pietra dura. I shall have him set in a ring, and distribute his likeness on the seals of my letters-this tributary mite, toward a revival of celebrity for immortal old Homer, having (possibly) been Fate's intention, in first having it carved and started on its westward way, eighteen hundred years ago. Who knows but the best kind of immortality needs a lift, from time to time-eh, General? But my letter waxes long for a sick man's.-Adieu.

LETTER FROM HUDSON HIGHLANDS.

Hudson Highlands, August —.

DEAR MORRIS:-I have mended my pen to the music of a cow-bell, and sit at a cool window on the north side of a pleasant farm-house-no interruption possible except from these very communicative poultry-(and, somehow, cocks and hens seem to have a great deal to say to each other)—so that, if comfort and leisure do not prevent, I am likely to inveigle this innocent summer's morning into a letter. Really a day as beautiful as this should have a voice to speak for itself. If there has, ever before, been one as beautiful, and if its sunshine and breezes went past unrecorded, I can only say the Past should give back its unwritten. Is there no Morse, to make the shadow of a tree work like a pen in the sun's hand, and keep a diary as it goes round-to make a breeze tell what it reads, as it turns over the leaves in the forest-to take down the meanings of Nature, and "write words" for the eternal" airs with accompaniments" given us by the winds and running brooks? What do you suppose the angels think, of our knowledge of what is about us? I shall be surprised, a hundred years hence, if I do not look back upon the world, and find that we have walked it like flies in a library-complacently philandering over the backs of volumes of secrets for which our poor buzz contained no articulation!

But you are waiting for the history of my recent explorings. I have seen the world from the seat of a farmer's

The

wagon, for two or three weeks, and have “ got in" scenery, as my landlord has got in hay-till the loft is inconveniently full. My pen, that plays pitchfork, would easier give you your fodder if it were less weighed down with what you do not want. rack gets its name, probably, from the painful disproportion between each "feed" and the size of the "mow." What shall I ever do, with all the beautiful trees, streams and valleys, that I have taken into my memory in the last twenty days; and which I can neither forget, nor re-produce in description?

To go round behind where the thunder comes from, has always been a wish of mine, when at West Point, and this I have accomplished at last, in a trip from the other side. I am ruralizing, as you know, on the Pacific Ocean slope of the Alps which look across Fort Putnam to the Atlantic. From here, as from New York, "the Point" is, in fact, an islandno getting to it except by water—and the next easiest way to reach it seemed to be to climb up into the clouds and slide down from above, with the trick of some" gentle shower." I have done this-having fairly mounted to the cloud line, gone up through, come out on the other side, and alighted safely at Rider's. You should have witnessed mine host's astonishment at seeing me arrive by a conveyance of which he knew nothing!

To describe the excursion more intelligibly:

I was indebted to a kind clergyman, of the village near by, for the offer of guidance in this rather unusual trip to West Point over the mountains. The distance is reckoned at about eight miles, and to go and return is a fair day's work. My friend, Mr. C———————, is a very public-spirited man, and he had another errand beside showing me the road. He wished to make some movement, at the Point, for the raising of a monument to Duncan, whose grave, without a stone to mark it, is on one of the eminences near this, overlooking the Hudson. Of his success in forming a plan for this purpose, and its claim on the public, I will elsewhere speak-confining my present. letter to the excursion.

Mr. C- is the tiller of the soil of a farm, as well as of the souls of a congregation, and drove round, for me, at seven in the morning, with a very spirited pair of horses in his open wagon. The road we were to travel was more rough than new-its most frequent traveller at one time, having been