I was once, upon a warm summer afternoon, journeying on horseback in that wild and picturesque tract of country, in New Hampshire, which borders on the upper portion of the mountainborn Merrimac, when a dark thunder cloud, that had been gathering, unperceived by me, in the distance, rose up suddenly from behind the screening hills, apprising me at once, by its threatening aspect, and the rapidity with which it was rolling towards me, that a thorough drenching was only to be avoided by an i...

God made the country and man made the town. So wrote the charming Cowper, giving us to understand, by the drift of the context, that he intended the remark as having a moral as well as a physical application; since, as he there intimates, in "gain-devoted cities," whither naturally flow "the dregs and feculence of every land," and where "foul example in most minds begets its likeness," the vices will ever find their favorite haunts; while the virtues, on the contrary, will always most abou...

The summer’s sun was throwing his parting beams over the circular range of high, detached hills that enclosed a small village situated near the mouth of one of the Green Mountain tributaries of the Connecticut river. Long, wavy lines of thin, blue smoke becoming visible in the absence of the sun, lay stretched, with their delicate aerial tracery, from hill to hill above the shaded hamlet, beneath which the piteous bleat of the hungry calf, the lowing of the returning cow, the joyous shouts...

Towards night, on the twelfth of March, 1775, a richly-equipped double sleigh, filled with a goodly company of well-dressed persons of the different sexes, was seen descending from the eastern side of the Green Mountains, along what may now be considered the principal thoroughfare leading from the upper navigable portions of the Hudson to those of the Connecticut River. The progress of the travellers was not only slow, but extremely toilsome, as was plainly evinced by the appearance of the...

Our Hero, the present Thrice Illustrious TIMOTHY PEACOCK, Esquire, was born in a small village in the interior of Rhode Island. His father and mother were deserters from a British fleet. They had, however, once seen brighter days than this circumstance might seem to imply; for Mr. Peacock, at one time, had the honor to write himself Chief Butcher to His Majesty George III., London. Mrs. Peacock, before she united her destinies to those of the honored father of our hero—that union which was...

“God made the country and man made the town.” So wrote the charming Cowper, giving us to understand, by the drift of the context, that he intended the remark as having a moral as well as a physical application; since, as he there intimates, in “gain-devoted cities,” whither naturally flow “the dregs and feculence of every land,” and where “foul example in most minds begets its likeness,” the vices will ever find their favorite haunts; while the virtues, on the contrary, will always most ab...

Ethan Allen is the Robin Hood of Vermont. As Robin Hood's life was an Anglo-Saxon protest against Norman despotism, so Allen's life was a protest against domestic robbery and foreign tyranny. As Sherwood Forest was the rendezvous of the gallant and chivalrous Robin Hood, so the Green Mountains were the home of the dauntless and high-minded Ethan Allen. As Robin Hood, in Scott's "Ivanhoe," so does Allen, in Thompson's "Green Mountain Boys," win our admiration. Although never a citizen of th...

Those who have wandered along the banks of the Otter Creek, in search of the beautiful and picturesque, may have extended their rambles, perhaps, to lake Dunmore, which lies embosomed among the hills a few miles to the eastward of that quiet stream. If so, their taste for natural scenery has doubtless been amply gratified: for there is no spot in the whole range of the Green Mountains that combines more of the requisites for a perfect landscape than this romantic sheet of water and its sur...

Our story, contrary perhaps to fashionable precedent, opens at a common farm-house, situated on one of the principal roads leading through the interior of the northerly portion of the Union. It was near the middle of the day, in that part of the spring season when the rough and chill features of winter are becoming so equally blended with the soft and mild ones of summer upon the face of nature, that we feel at loss in deciding whether the characteristics of the one or the other most preva...

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of bein...

“Dear foster-mOther, on whose ample breast The hungry still find food, the weary rest; The child of want that treads thy happy shore, Shall feel the grasp of poverty no more; His honest toil meet recompense can claim, And Freedom bless him with a freeman’s name!” S.M. IN OUR WORK of “Roughing it in the Bush,” I endeavoured to draw a picture of Canadian life, as I found it twenty years ago, in the Backwoods. My motive in giving such a melancholy narrative to the British public, was prompted...