It can boast of no rude tower or mouldering wall, clustered with historical associations that have been gathering around them for centuries. It has no fine old castles, in glory or in ruins, with visions of romance pictured in their dim shadows ; no splendid abbeys or cathedrals, in grandeur or decay, from which emanate an aura of religious memories. Nor can it boast of mansions or ancestral halls wherein a line of heroes have been born, or illustrious families have lived and died, generation after generation. Upon its banks not a vestige of feudal power may he seen, because no citadel of great wrongs ever rested there. The dead Past has left scarcely a record upon its shores. It is full of the living Present, illustrating by its general aspect the free thought and free action which are giving strength and solidity to the young and vigorous nation within whose bosom its bright waters flow.

Yet the Hudson is not without a history -- a history brilliant in some respects, and in all interesting, not only to the American, but to the whole ci^'ilised world. Prom the spot where we now stand -- the turbulent Glen's Palls -- to the sea, the banks of the beautiful river have voices innumerable for the ear of the patient listener ; telling of joy and woe, of love and beauty, of noble heroism, and more noble fortitude, of glory, and high renown, worthy of the sweetest cadences of the minstrel, the glowing numbers of the poet, the deepest investigations of the philosopher, and the gravest records of the historian. Let us listen to those voices.