rm and true.

But what a stranger would first notice in coming into town is, that the
houses, instead of being on land regularly laid out for building, seem
to have grown up here and there and everywhere, a good deal in
accordance with their own sweet wills, and without the smallest regard
to surroundings.

But there are handsome houses in Amesbury, and these are growing more
numerous every year. The people themselves would assert that the walks
and drives about the village, the hills and the river are the things to
be longest remembered about the place. If they were inclined to
boasting, they might say also that they had as good a right as any
people in America to be considered of ancient stock, for some of the
names of the earliest settlers are the familiar names in the town
to-day, and few towns in America are older than Amesbury. The names
Barnard, Challis, Weed, Jones, and Hoyt, appear on the first board of
"Prudenshall," and that of Richard Currier as town clerk. This was in
April, 1668, the year after the new town was named.

Early in 1735 the settlement of Newbury (then spelled Newberry) was
begun. In a little over three years a colony was sent out across the
Merrimac. The plantation was at first called merely from the name of the
river. In 1639 it was named Colchester by the General Court; but October
7, 1640, this name was changed to Salisbury, so that in 1638, almost two
hundred and fifty years ago, Salisbury began to be settled. It seemed as
if there was need of new settlements at that time to counteract the
depletions in the Old World, for the Thirty Years' War was still
impoverishing Germany; Richelieu was living to rule France in the name
of his royal master, Louis XIII; England was gathering up those forces
of good and evil which from resisting tyranny at last grew intoxicated
with power, and so came to play the tyrant and regicide. For it was
about that time that Charles I had disbanded his army, trusting to the
divinity that, in the eyes of the Stuarts, did ever hedge a king, and at
the same time thrown away his honor by pledging himself to what he never
meant to perform. While this farce, which preceded the tragedy, was
being set upon the stage of history, here, three thousand miles away,
nature had begun to build up the waste, and to prophesy growth.

Salisbury, and afterwards Amesbury, were named from the two towns so
famous in England, the Salisbury Plain of Druidical memory, on which is
the ce