tor," who yet lives and finds believers, in the country towns of New England. Unlike all others of the medicinal art, he never goes from home, nor receives compensation, except in the form of presents, for his marvellous cures. Among the pleasant hills of Chester, not far from where Lake Massabesick sleeps so quietly in its beautiful basin, there may still be found, in a low, moss-roofed cottage, the arch physician of the scrofula. He is a genuine "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," no daughter intervening to break the magic chain, and though now past sixty-five years in age, still practises for the benefit of the believing ones. His process of operating upon his patients is simple enough, consisting only of a series of manipulations for several successive days upon the neck and chest,-a system of rules for the diet of the patient, and a piece of money suspended around the neck, to be constantly worn through life. Strange as it may seem, thousands of persons, within the last ten years, have been the dupes of this miserable pretender, and at this very day, intelligent people from the country around will bring their children to him, to be touched for scrofulous complaints.

Thus much, then, for the medicinal art in the country. There, as everywhere else, human sufferings and human credulity afford to quacks and ignorant impostors a never-failing harvest. Still, the science of medicine, founded on the broad principles of truth, is fast gaining ground; the standard of education among the

profession is rising; legislation is protecting the community from the evils of empiricism; a knowledge of physiology is obtaining among every class, and the day cannot be far distant, when both merit and ignorance, in this most important art to man's weal in this world, will meet their own reward.

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 P is 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,