THE VILLAGE.

And thus he described them by person and name,

They entered and dinner was served as they came.-WAVE RLY.

THE village of P— is one of the prettiest in the Bay State. Many a traveller through Massachusetts remembers, when his journey is over, what a beautiful succession of neat and thrifty hamlets kept his attention alive, for hundreds of miles, through the thickly populated territory; but, among them, he thinks of one as the finest and fairest of all, and forgets not, as his children cluster around him under the shade of a summer afternoon, or by the fireside of a winter evening, to tell them of the beauty and loveliness of the village, with the "tall elm tree." In fact, the village of Pis deserving of the universal notice it obtains; and before the Great Western Rail-Road came through the place, carrying on its back, like some fleet devil, the whole moving world, whether they will or not,-in those good old days, when the trot of the stage horse measured, with sun-dial correctness, its three miles and three quarters an hour, and the weary way was enlivened by many a cheerful story and stirring laugh,

the village was known and noticed by everybody. Its broad, shaded streets, through whose whole length there was not one dilapidated mansion; its raised walls on either side with white-washed posts and rails; its green and tasteful court yards; its houses, and churches, and hotels; its manufactories on the outskirts and its park in the centre; all make it deservedly one of the most admired villages of New England.

But most noticed, and most admired, of everything in the village, was the old elm tree. This bore away the palm, and rightly. It stood, and still stands, in the very centre of the Park, which itself stands in the centre of the village, towering majestically far above every object around it, and seeming a mighty monarch among the beeches and maples, which, like a guard of yeomanry, are growing up all over the green. It is a forest-tree, one of the old aboriginal growth when the town was settled, and in the mind of every native citizen, is associated with all the sunny hours and fairy visions of childhood. Beneath it the boys play their games of cricket and bass, and have played them an hundred years; the swain whispers there his soft tale to the ruddy cheeked lass he loves; the school-girls circle round it, in their soft-toned merriment; fourth of July brings to it crowds of mimic, noise-loving heroes, whose shots, and bruises, and unceasing crackings, the old tree, dressed in gay pennons and waving flags, receives upon his rough sides, like a hearty, hale veteran, as he is. The grave go there to meditate, and the gay

to dance; strangers stand and admire the broad base and erect trunk of the unmatched elm; it is the hunting party's rendezvous to count their game; the lawyer holds his petty court and the itinerant minstrel his gaping crowd beneath its broad branches; while its deep shadows are alike sought, and alike grateful, to the youth and the man of eighty years.

The situation of the village is pleasant as one could wish. Standing in a valley, mid-way between the Hoosac and Tagkannuc ranges of hills, whose broad sides slope gradually down to the rich bottoms of the Housatonic-commanding an extensive prospect far to the north, where the hoary Saddle Mountain crowds all egress from the valley into a narrow defile,-and catching, from the south, faint glimpses of highlands, looming from the distant seaboard—surrounded by a fertile soil, over whose rolling surface well cultivated farms, fat pastures, and groves of maple and chestnut lie thickly scattered, and for the produce of which it affords a ready market, the village of P may boast of a situation, in respect to beauty, healthfulness and wealth, which can rarely be equalled, and is surely nowhere surpassed. From some points it commands a beauty of mountain scenery, to which I have nowhere seen a rival. The Hoosacs rise before the spectator, not with the sublime variety of rock and cliff which characterize mountains of the primary class, but huge, round headed, and distinctly defined against the sky, their broad bosoms, covered with the greenest herbage,

now swelling so beautifully round, now gently and softly depressed, that to the eye untired of gazing, they seem endowed with the motions of life. Below them, the streams slumber stagnant among reeds and willows, or brawl along beneath the shade of natural copsewood; are now hurried down declivities, and anon purl more leisurely through little lonely valleys, which, opening from time to time, seem to invite the stranger to explore their recesses.

The dwelling houses of the village are mostly of the same style of architecture; neat white buildings, with green venetians, and jessamined porticos, standing back from the street far enough for pretty court-yards well grown with shrubbery, and having tasteful and productive gardens running off in the rear. There are some, indeed, that rise ambitiously above the others, boasting another story, or a long piazza, or a more modern style; and others that, in their natural sites and well cultivated grounds, may vie in beauty with whatever you could name. On the old cantonment grounds, at one end of the street, is a flourishing female school, and while I now write, grass of the deepest green spreads over the smooth lawn before it, stretching far away to the east, like a rich carpet; the foliage of the trees and shrubbery is clean and soft, and shooting out in all luxuriance; the garden is tastefully laid out and redolent of beauty; and the "garniture of the fields" and mountains around, is glorious from the hand of the great Adorner. The birds make here their favorite re

sort, and from earliest morning, till far towards noonday,

“Thick around the woodland hymns arise."

Three very grave old robins, with their respective ladies, make year after year their summer residences in the dense covered arbor, and though experienced in architecture, a pert little sparrow on an apple tree in the corner, vies with them every summer, in the beauty and tastefulness of his nest. A whole mob of plebeian chipbirds are every day hard at work in the rose bushes on the circular walks, taking little heed of anything, save an aristocratic oriole, who having finished his nest, on an overhanging bough of the elm tree, looks down upon them with a most lordly and provoking complacency. The workies in their brown homespun coats, seem to take this conduct in high dudgeon, and notwithstanding a three years' title, which the oriole can show, his golden coat and overbearing air have well nigh waked the little radicals into Heidelburg insurrection.

For scenes of rural peace and comfort, there are cottages and farm houses nearer or more remote, and the traveller marks them as they stand peacefully in hundreds over the town, making it beautiful through all its wide valleys and narrow glens. Now there is one by the hill side, to which a narrow path leads up, lowly, but seeming comfortable, and neatly arranged, where, on frosty mornings, you may see the thin blue smoke