fires
were lighted. The blackened shell of the building stands in cold
decrepitude, a melancholy vestige of usefulness outlived. In consequence
of the stoppage of the works, Hanover has lost seven-eighths of its
population, and only about fifty inhabitants remain in the white
cottages grouped about the Big House, who are employed in agricultural
labors and occupations connected with the forest. Yet in this solitary
nook the elegances and the tastes of the most cultivated society are to
be found. The Big House, surrounded by its well-trimmed gardens sloping
down to the broad Rancocus, with its comfortable apartments, and the
diversified prospect which it commands, offers a resting-place which,
although deep in the genuine forest, combines urban refinement with the
quiet and seclusion of country-life.

Bright and early on the morning after my arrival, Friend B. was at my
door; and after a savory, if hasty breakfast, we sounded _boute-selle_.
Outside the gate a couple of forest-ponies were waiting,--stout, lively,
five-year-olds, equal, if not to a two-forty heat, yet to twenty miles
of steady trot without distress,--brown and sleek as you please, with
the knowingest eyes, and intelligence expressed in the impatient stamp
of the fore-foot, and good-humor in the twitching of the ear. Into the
saddle and off, with the cheery breeze to bathe us in exhilaration,
as it went humming around us laden with aromatic odors and mysterious
whisperings of the pine-trees to the sea,--through the dew-diamonded
grass of the little lawn at the top of the hill,--past the great elm
with its glistening foliage, and its carolling crew of just-awakened
birds,--then a canter down the sandy slope to the edge of the forest,
and again the pines are around us.

Before us lay a four-mile ride over a devious track among trees which my
companion knows by heart. Paths diverge into the forest on either side,
running north and south, east and west, straight and crooked, narrow
and broad; but B. follows unerringly the right, though undistinguished
trail. This knowledge of woodcraft,--how it appalls and wonder-strikes
the unlearned metropolitan, accustomed as he is to numbered houses and
name-boarded streets! No omnibus-driver threading the confusion of a
great thoroughfare could shape his course with greater assurance and
lack of hesitation than does B. through these endless avenues of
heavy-foliaged pines, broken only now and then by some tangled,
impene