ng soil. Beautiful
villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on
the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and
admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead
level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like
the great swells of the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there
could be no passage."

To this autumnal limning, the following spring picture may be a fitting
accompaniment:--

"At last Spring is here in full flush. Winter held on tenaciously and
mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern
journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog-
chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious
grass--super-best of earth's garniture--with its ever-satisfying green.
The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.
'Plant your corn, plant your corn,' says he, as he scurries athwart the
ploughed ground, hardly lifting his crank wings to a level with his back,
so self-important is he in his admonitions. The earlier birds have gone
to housekeeping, and have disappeared from the spray. There has been
brief period for them, this spring, for scarcely has the deep snow gone,
but the dark-green grass has come, and first we shall know, the ground
will be yellow with dandelions.

"I incline to thank Heaven this glorious morning of May 16th for the
pleasant home from which we can greet the Spring. Hitherto we have had
to await it amid a thicket of village houses, low down, close together,
and awfully white. For a prospect, we had the hinder part of an ugly
meeting-house, which an enterprising neighbor relieved us of by planting
a dwelling-house, right before our eyes, (on his own land, and he had a
right to,) which relieved us also of all prospect whatever. And the
revival spirit of habitation which has come over Concord is clapping up a
house between every two in the already crowded town; and the prospect is,
it will be soon all buildings. They are constructing, in quite good
taste though, small, trim, cottage-like. But I had rather be where I can
breathe air, and see beyond my own features, than be smothered among the
prettiest houses ever built. We are on the slope of a hill; it is all
sand, be sure, on all four sides of us, but the air is free, (and the
sand, too, at times,) and our water, there is danger of hard drinking to