LETTER IV.

APPEARANCE OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN-NEW HAVEN-SCENERY -ANECDOTES OF THE REGICIDES OF CHARLES I.-ANCIENT AND MODERN BURYING GROUNDS-A FUNERAL-CHARACTER OF THE NEW ENGLANDERS-THEIR FONDNESS FOR SCOTISH POETRY AND NOVELS-STATE OF EDUCATION-SCHOOL FUND -STATE OF RELIGION-ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM-UNUSUAL OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH-SERMONS-SABBATH SCHOOLS.

New Haven, Connecticut, July, 1818.

THERE is nothing in Britain that bears any resemblance to a New England town, and it is not easy to convey to you an adequate idea of its singular

neatness.

The houses are generally of wood, painted white, and decorated with Venetian blinds of a brilliant green. The solid frame work of the walls is covered externally with thin planks, called by Americans clapboards, which overlap each other from the eaves downward, and serve effectually to exclude rain. The roof is covered with shingles, which are thin slips of wood put on like slates, and painted of a dark blue. The buildings are in general about two stories in height; the door is decorated with a neat portico, and very frequently a projecting piazza, most grateful in hot weather,

with benches under it, extends along the whole front of the house. Mouldings and minute decorations of various kinds are carried round the principal projections. A garden is not unfrequent behind, and a neat wooden railing in front, enclosing a grass plot and a few trees. Such houses would soon look rusty and weather beaten, were they in our climate, but they enjoy here a purer atmosphere, and the smoke of coal fires is unknown. The painting is renewed about once a year, which serves to preserve the wood for a long time.

The churches, or meeting houses as they are more generally called, are in the smaller towns also of wood, and with the addition of a steeple and a gilt weathercock, resemble very much the other buildings. In the large towns they are of brick or stone, but retain in almost all cases the green Venetian blinds upon the windows.

The streets are wide and generally run off, at right angles to each other, from a large open square covered with green turf, in the centre of the town; the churches, town-house, and an inn or two, not unfrequently front this green. Gravel walks skirt many of the streets, and occasionally rows of limes, or poplars. The agreeable succession of gardens, grass plots, trees, foot walks, and buildings, gives an air of rural quietness to the town; and the open space which frequently intervenes between one house and another, prevents much of the danger which would otherwise arise

DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWN.

95

from fire. Every thing betokens an unusual share of homely simplicity and comfort, and the absence at once of great riches and of great poverty.

New Haven possesses most of the distinctive peculiarities which I have now noticed, but combines with them much of the compactness, durability, and bustle, which we usually consider inseparable from a town. The churches and a great many of the dwelling houses are of brick, a few even of stone, and two or three of the streets are very closely built. The numerous buildings also of Yale College, all of brick, and constructed with regularity and neatness, complete its claims to superiority. The population of New Haven is about 7000.

The country around New Haven is very picturesque. Behind the town, at a distance of about two miles, is an amphitheatre of rugged hills, not unlike some of our Scotish scenery; in front is an inlet from Long Island Sound affording a safe and commodious harbour; to the right and left a richly cultivated country relieved by patches of forest, and in wide expanse before it the blue waves of the sea rolling in magnificence. Two bare precipices called East and West Rock, 400 feet high and about two miles apart, form part of the semicircular range; they are prominent features in the landscape, and events in the annals of our native country with which they are associated, impart to them that traditional charm which is so often

wanting in American scenery. In the fastnesses of these rocks some of the regicides of Charles 1st found shelter from their pursuers, when the agents of his profligate son hunted them for their lives. Their story is so interesting that I cannot forbear transcribing a portion of it from an early number of the Quarterly Review. The event with which it is introduced took place during a war between the New England Settlers and the Indians, which ended in the utter extermination of the aboriginal tribe,2 by which the Eastern coast of the United States had been previously possessed.

"The most impressive circumstance in the course of this war occurred at Hadley: the Indians having laid Deersfield in ashes, surprised Hadley during the time of public worship. The men of the town had long been in the habit of taking their arms with them when they attended divine service, -they were however panic-stricken and confused, and in all human probability not a soul would have escaped alive, had not an old and venerable man, whose dress was different from that of the inhabitants, and whom no one had seen before, suddenly appeared among them; he rallied them, put himself at their head, gave his orders like one accustomed to battle, led them on, routed the enemy,

1 Vide Quarterly Review, Vol. II. P. 324.

2 The tragical death of their high minded but unfortunate chief, "PHILIP of POKANOKET," forms the subject of one of Mr. Irving's affecting papers in the second volume of the SKETCH BOOK.

REGICIDES OF CHARLES I.

97

and when the victory was complete, was no where to be found. This deliverer, whom the people thus preserved from death and torments long believed to be an angel, was General Goffe, one of the men who sat in judgment upon Charles 1st. His adventures in America are deeply interesting. He and his father-in-law General Whalley, another of the King's judges, left England a few days before the Restoration; they landed at Boston, waited on Endicot the Governor, to inform him who they were, took up their residence in a neighbouring village, and were greatly respected, till the hue and cry followed them from Barbadoes. They were then warned to make their escape, and accordingly they removed to New Haven, a place about a hundred and fifty miles distant. Here they owed their lives to the intrepidity of the minister John Davenport, who when their pursuers arrived preached to the people from this text. 'Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noon day, hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab,-be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." Large rewards were offered for their apprehension, or for any information which might lead to it. Davenport was threatened, for it was known that he had harboured them:upon hearing that he was in danger, they offered

: