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Show 1836- 1837] Fogg's Far West 251 skylight, bathing the brow of heaven in a tender roseate, which hours after cheered the lonely traveller across the waste. The pilgrim wanderer in other climes comes back to tell us of sunnier skies and softer winds 1 The blue heavens of Italy have tasked the inspiration of an hundred bards, and the warm brush of her own Lorraine has swept the canvass with their gorgeous transcript! But what pencil has wandered over the grander scenes of the North American prairie? What bard has struck his lyre to the wild melody of loveliness of the prairie sunset? Yet who shall tell us that there exists not a glory in the scene, amid the untrod wastes of the wilderness West, which even the skies of " sunny Italy" might not blush anew to acknowledge? No wandering Harold has roamed on a pilgrimage of poetry over the sublime and romantic scenery of our land, to hymn its praise in breathing thoughts and glowing words; yet here as there, " Parting day Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues With a new colour as it gasps away: The last still loveliest, till - ' tis gone- and all is gray I" I cannot tell of the beauties of climes I have never seen; but I have gazed upon all the varied loveliness of my own fair, native land, from the rising [ 237] sun to its setting, and in vain have tasked my fancy to image a fairer. A pleasant day's ride directly west from Carlisle, over extensive and beautiful prairies, intersected by shady woods, with their romantic creeks, and the traveller finds himself in the quiet village of Lebanon. Its site is a commanding, mound- like elevation in the skirts of a forest, swelling gently up from the prairie on the west bank of Little Silver Creek."* •* Lebanon was laid out by Governor William Kinney and Thomas Ray in July, 1825. little Silver Creek rises in the northeastern portion of St. Clair County and |