The beautiful hues of the foliage of the maple, hickory, chestnut, birch, sassafras, and several other kinds of deciduous trees in the Northern and Middle Stales, seen just before the falling of the leaf in autumn, are almost unknown in Europe. A picture by Cropsey, one of the most eminent of living American landscape painters, in which this peculiarity of foliage was represented, drew from one of the minor English poets the following sonnet : --

CROPSEY'S "AUTUMN ON THE HUDSON."

[Addressed to J. T. Field, of Boston.]

Forgot are Summer and our English air ;

Here is )'Our Autumn with her -wonch-ous dyes ;

Silent and vast your forests round us rise :

God, glorified in Nature, fronts us tliere.

In His transcendent works as heavenly fair

As when they first seemed good unto His eyes.

See, what a brightness on the canvas lies !

Hues, seen not hero, flash on us everywhere ;

Kadiance that Nature here from us conceals ;

Glory with which she beautifies decay

In your far world, this master's hand reveals.

Wafting our blest sight from dimmed streets away,--

With what rare power !-- to where our awed soul kneels

To Him who bade these splendours light the day.

VV. C. Bensett.

Erom the summit is a grand and extensive view of the surrounding scenery, which Dr. Dwight (afterwards President of Yale College) described, in 1778, as " majestic, solemn, wild, and melancholy." Dwight was then chaplain of a Connecticut regiment stationed at "West Point, and ascended the Sugar Loaf with the soldier-poet, Colonel Humphreys.