LETTER FROM GREENWOOD LAKE.

A VAGUE rumor of a new place of summer resort, of which we could find no advertisement, nor get any definite description, tempted us to slip from our editorial harness, last week, and take a sniff of fresh air and discovery. That there was a 66 Greenwood Lake," somewhere between Orange and Rockland counties— somewhere between Goshen and Newburg—that a hotel had lately been opened on its shore for summer custom, and that it was to be reached by the milk-and-butter avenue of Chester Valley, was all that "general information" could furnish, as to its whereabout and accommodations. Just at this time, conversation runs mainly on these places of resort, and we presume, therefore, that some more definite description will be of interest to our readers.

To begin with what you might else skip to find :-Greenwood Lake is sixty-five miles distant from New York, and the cost of reaching Chester, ten miles from it, is one dollar and five cents, by the Erie Railroad. By the train, whose passengers leave New York in the Thomas Powell, (foot of Duane-st.,) at five, P. M., you arrive at Chester at nine in the evening. An open wagon takes you hence to the Lake in an hour and a half, or

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two hours, price one dollar--road rather rough and wagon-springs altogether unmerciful—and a large and showy hotel receives you on the edge of the water. Thus much for statistics, a la Guide

Book.

The "Thomas Powell" did the twenty miles to Piermont, as usual, in an hour and a quarter, and-apropos-as she returns the same evening, by half-past nine, and serves an admirable supper on board, what more delightful excursion could there be than this her daily trip? She remains at Piermont two hours, and, Irving's residence being on the opposite bank of the river, and a ferry across just established, a look at Sunny-side and Sleepy Hollow might be included in the evening's pleasure.

[Let us insert, here, a suggestion to omnibus proprietors. Considering the crowds of passengers landing continually from the ferries and steamers, why would it not "pay" to run a line along the water-side, from the Battery to Canal-street, and so up to Broadway? At present, the gauntlet of insolent drivers that one has to run, to get ashore, and the alternative, at your own door, between an imposition or a quarrel with hack drivers, are the disagreeable accompaniments of arrival; and vex strangers, while they deter many citizens from making excursions at all. Giving his ticket to a systemized company for delivering baggage, the passenger might then take the omnibus, and the mere possibility of this escape from their extortions, would make drivers both more civil and more honest.]

Of the rail road track of unparalleled beauty of scenery, between Piermont and Chester, we shall have more to say, when we have rambled on foot, as we mean to do this summer, all over the miniature Switzerland threaded by the Ramapo river. Let the lover of the beautiful, (without contenting himself with a

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GREENWOOD LAKE.

look from one window, and at one side, only,) place himself at the end of the last car, and, riding backwards, watch his path as he speeds along. It is a rapid succession of exquisite surprises for the eye, each one of the thousands of which would be a picture well worth preserving. The hint is enough, for those who have the taste to care for what is lovely.

Greenwood Lake Hotel has the usual mistakes of taste which such places invariably have, in our country-too much white paint, portico, parlor, piano, and pretension, and too little of what the needless excess in such ostentation would easily have bought. As the house and its appurtenances are at present arranged, there is a want of refinement which would alone prevent any delicate person from staying there at all. But the capabilities of the location are great. The Lake is nine miles in length, and spreads away in a vast oblong mirror to the West, the high hills which frame it are of fresh green forest, and the shape of the valley, in which it lies, is such, that the Hotel lies in a tunnel for the wind, and there is always a breeze in summer. With singular dulness to taste and convenience, the proprietor has set his house at a long distance from any shade, and the visitors who should go out when the sun were high, would be broiled before they could get to the woods. This makes the place uninhabitable for children. The one negro waiter, who had a ludicrous habit of concluding every sentence he uttered with "and so forth," betrayed the effect of this want of shade, in his account of the habits of the house, given to us at our solitary breakfast.

"How do people amuse themselves here?" we asked. "In the morning," he said, "the ladies ride a-horseback, etc. In the evening, they walk, and go out sailing, etc."

"And what do they do, during the day ?" we inquired, hoping

to hear of some excursion to waterfall, or wood, or glen, or some other escape from paint and whitewash.

"Oh, in the day-time, Sir, the ladies don't do nothing, except lay pretty still, etc."

When will the builders of new summer resorts learn that good mattresses and linen sheets are more attractive than columns and porticoes, and that the close neighborhood of woods is indispensable? When will they civilize to decency in the construction of the house, and trust less exclusively to the showiness of the parlor furniture, for in-door attraction? With half what this hotel has cost, a house on Greenwood Lake might have been one of the most desirable places of resort in the country. As it is, we should suppose no person who had any idea of comfort would stay there a day.

Yours, &c.

LETTER FROM RAMAPO.

RAMAPO VALLEY, (Erie Railroad,) July 2.

DEAR MORRIS:-"Far enough away for a letter" is a measurement essentially altered, of late, by rail road and telegraph. Though forty or fifty miles from you, it seems almost absurd to write, when I could go to you in an hour and a half.

Away from home" is a comparative thing, after all-since a tortoise would measure it at twenty feet, and a bird at twenty miles. An advertisement, in a New York paper, of "a countryseat in this vicinity," formerly meant a place within five miles. As about one hour distant was thus implied, and you may now go thirty miles in the same hour, "this vicinity" is a phrase of six times as much meaning. The express train, on the English railroads, go, regularly, sixty miles in the hour; and as things progress, we may as well call this Ramapo Valley a suburb of New York, for such it will be, shortly-(within half an hour of Hoboken, that is to say)—though a valley in Norway or Sweden is, at present, hardly less known or thought of.

I had been so impressed with the glimpses of romantic scenery, which I caught in whirling through the sixteen miles of this