From the time we
leave the Granite State, with it a wild, fierce grandeur, its long,
dreary reaches of unfertile pastures, and its wealth of stone wall,--so
abundant that travellers wonder where the stones came from to build it,
seeing no lack in the road or field,--from the time we enter on trim,
well-kept Massachusetts, the panorama shifts with ever new interest and
beauty. We leave the pretentious brick houses, or the glaring white
ones, which mark the uncultivated taste of the American Switzerland, and
enter for the first time regions impressed with the necessary element of
fine landscape, maturity. With and under the old oaks and birches rest
the sad-colored houses that have held life and experience,--birth,
death, and old historic adventure.
Looking over the broad meadows that skirt the Connecticut by Hadley and
Northampton, one seems to see under the distant oaks spectral shapes of
Indian struggle, or wandering regicides, hiding their noble heads in
caves, or bursting out like white spirits to lead and avenge.
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