CHAPTER V.

ON the 3d of October, 1827, we left Stockbridge, and proceeded across the country to Northampton, another of those beautiful New England villages, which it is impossible to overpraise. Our road was conducted through ravines, over mountain passes, and occasionally along the very summit of ridges, from whence we commanded a view of sufficient beauty to redeem, in the course of one morning, all the flatness and insipidity of our previous journey. The greater part, indeed, of the country which we had yet seen-always, of course, excepting the beautiful Lake George, and delightful Hudson-consisted either of ploughed fields, or impenetrable forests, or it was spotted over with new villages, as raw and unpicturesque as if they had just stepped out of a saw-pit. The towns of Massachusetts, on the contrary, were embellished with ornamental trees and flower gardens, while the larger features of the landscape

owed their interest to the more vigorous accompaniments of rocks, mountains, waterfalls, and all the varied lights and shades of Alpine scenery.

In the course of this agreeable day's journey, we traversed a considerable portion of the route over which it has been seriously proposed, I was assured, to carry a rail-road between the cities of Boston and Albany. No single State, still less any Section of the Union, it seems, likes to be outdone by any other State; and this feeling of rivalry, stimulated by the success of the great Erie Canalan undertaking highly favoured by nature-has, I suppose, suggested the visionary project in question. In answer to the appeals frequently made to my admiration of this scheme, I was compelled to admit, that there was much boldness in the conception; but I took the liberty of adding, that I -conceived the boldness lay in the conception alone; for, if it were executed, its character would be changed into madness.

Albany and Boston lie nearly east and west of each other; while much of the intermediate space is so completely ribbed over by a series of high ridges running north and south, that the rail-way in question would have to pass along a sort of gigantic corduroy road, over a country altogether unsuited for such an undertaking. Besides which, several navigable rivers, and more than one canal,

lying along the intermediate valleys, connect the interior with the sea, and thus afford far readier means of exporting or importing goods to or from New York, Albany, or Boston, than any rail-way can ever furnish.

The same reasoning might be applied to a hundred other projects in the United States, many of them not less impracticable, but which, although existing only on paper, are, nevertheless, assumed as completed, and cast into the balance of American greatness, till the imaginary scale, loaded with anticipated magnificence, makes the Old World kick the beam, to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants of that country, and the admiration of distant lands, who know nothing of the matter.

The view from the summit of Mount Holyoke, which we visited on the 4th of October, is really splendid, and is otherwise most satisfactory for travellers, from bringing under their eyes a great extent of country. The top is 880 feet above the level of the river Connecticut, which winds about in the alluvial land below, in a very fantastic style. This pretty stream was visible in a northern direction, for many miles, in the gorges amongst the hills; but, on turning to the south, we could discover only a few touches of it here and there, which to the naked eye seemed merely patches of smoke; but when viewed through a pocket telescope, these glimpses

looked like bits of some immense looking-glass shivered to pieces, and cast among the trees. As many of the hills and dales in this pleasing prospect had been long cleared of woods, the eye was not offended by that ragged appearance, so comfortless and hopeless-looking in most newly settled countries. Such spots, in this comparatively old part of the country, are laid out mostly in orchards,-but sometimes in meadow lands, or in wheat, or, more frequently still, in maize fields. The flourishing villages of Northampton, Hadley, and Amherst, lay almost at our feet. The planners of these, and indeed of most of the villages in that part of the United States, appear to have commenced by making a street, or unpaved avenue, of not less than eighty or a hundred yards in width, with a double row of trees on each side, and a walk between. The houses were almost invariably detached from one another, and stood back some ten or twelve yards from the broad and agreeably shaded walks lining the main street; the intervening space in front of the houses being generally railed in, and trimmed with shrubs, flowers, grass plots, and gravelled paths. Even the porches, and occasionally also the sides of the windows and the ends of the houses, were covered with creepers, in a very pleasing taste; and as most of these buildings were ef wood, painted white, with dark green doors and

folding shutters, made in the Venetian blind style, the effect of the whole was particularly striking.

Of the unrivalled splendours of an American autumn we had heard so much before, that we considered ourselves fortunate in seeing it in the very centre of the most favourable part of the country. I think it is the maple, whose leaves change at this season from light green to bright crimson, . on every branch from top to bottom. Whatever tree it was, however, nothing could be more dazzling than the effect produced. But there were many others, whose extreme tops only were yet tinged; but in such endless varieties of colour, and all so vivid, that it was sometimes wellnigh painful to the eye to look at them. I need not say with what effect the honest evergreens held their place as a sober ground-work to these brilliant though transitory tints—not the less pleasing, probably, on that account. Upon the whole, I do not know that I have seen in other countries any thing so wonderfully diversified, as the colours of the foliage at this season in New England.

The word for autumn in that country is the Falla term happily expressive of the fate of the leaves, and worthy, perhaps, of poetical, if not of vulgar adoption. Why, if the Spring be the rise of the year, should we not apply an equally descriptive expression to the period when the law of nature,