around which the neatly kept grounds give an air of refinement to the whole village, which is steeped in rural tranquillity.

The broad hills slope westward towards the valley of the Westfield, and beyond lie the shaggy sides of the Cummington range. Chesterfield has its special tradition of Lafayette passing the night in its old tavern, on his way from Albany to Boston, in 1824. It is a characteristic representative of the hill towns, so still that the air seems drowsy as in Rip Van Winkle's village. But such tranquil towns, in which a moving figure is half spectral and almost a surprise, were the beginnings of the nation. From these sequestered springs the mighty river flows.

Chesterfield has not half the population that it counted seventy years ago. The whole town now reports scarcely seven hundred persons. Yet, with all the old spirit, it invited its neighbors in Hampshire County to come and dine on one of the loveliest of summer days this year. It was the annual festival of the Hill-side Agricultural Society, and fully a thousand people filled the friendly town. The feast was spread upon tables on a green space beside the old house in which Lafayette slept, and under a bower of leafy white birch boughs. The magnates of the county were all present, and it was whispered privately that there were private whisperings among eminent politicians, who, however, with the non-political, or the political of the wrong side, talked cheerfully of the charming day and the promising crops. Politics is the breath of our patriotic nostrils, and it was a stimulating thought that while we were listening to the humorous but well-merited praises of Strawberry Hill pork, some of our bland companions were saving their bacon in other ways; and while we dreamed of crisp sausages and savory ham, were contriving Senators and Councillors, and even a Governor himself.

The simple courtesy and universal intelligence were of the old New England, nor less so the composure and ease with which speaker after speaker mounted the bench on which he sat, and in what he said, and the way in which he said it, showed that he was a graduate of the town meeting. The pastor of Goshen, asked to speak of some of the more noted citizens of the neighboring towns, might well have occupied with so fruitful a text all the hours until sunset. But with exemplary discretion he mentioned but a few, and among them some that surprised a New-Yorker, who had not known, but might have guessed, that Gideon Lee, former Mayor of the city, and Luther Bradish, Lieutenant-Governor of the State, came from the little town upon the Cummington hills opposite, where Bryant studied law.

The whole region before us, indeed, was especially Bryant's. Upon the slope yonder he was born, and we could see the house in which as a boy he lived. "Thanatopsis" was the hymn of his meditations among those solitary woods. There, upon the nearer hill, high over Plainfield, where he wrote the poem the "Water-fowl," forever floating in the twilight heavens—

We were looking upon the cradle of American literature. Here its first enduring poem was written. The poet himself never escaped the spell of the hills. The child was father of the man. Bryant in the city was always the grave and unchanged genius of New England. The city did not wear off the rusticity of his manner. His air was reserved and remote, and he was still wrapped in the seclusion of the hills. It is in such scenes and among such people on such a day that the power of these hills and their influence upon our national life and literature are perceived.

These hidden springs have overflowed the prairies of the West; and how much of the wealth and prosperity, the energy, industry, and enlightenment of New York have trickled down from them, you may hear, if you doubt, every year on Forefathers' Day at the New England dinner in New Amsterdam. As there is altogether too much glory to be adequately celebrated in one day, another has been added, to accommodate the Yankee city of Brooklyn, and it is not the fault of the sons of New England if on those two days the whole continent does not hear the melodious thunder of their eloquence proclaiming that New England always led, is leading still, and will lead forever, the triumphal procession of American progress.

Supported by such a history it is a natural boast. There is, however, one inexorable condition. To do what New England has done, New England must be what she has been.

THE GAME OF NEWPORT.

HERE is nothing more delightful than the gravity with which the game of Newport is played. To assist at one of the solemn "functions" like a coach parade is not unlike attendance upon a function of the ancient Church in Rome. On a true Newport afternoon, as soft and sweet and luminous an air as can be breathed, Newport, in every kind of stately and comfortable and light and graceful carriage, with the finest horses and the most loftily disdainful of coachmen, proceeds down the avenue to behold the stately procession along the ocean drive.

Of its kind there is no more beautiful drive in the world. The shore winds among rocks which are massed, a shrewd-eyed traveller said, as on the shores of Greece. The bold character of the coast of Rhode Island and its picturesque effects are wholly unknown upon its neighbor Long Island. The endless reach of sand and the monotony of the vast level land on Long Island have a certain vague charm as of a sea-shore becoming or about to become picturesque. But that point is fully reached by its northern neighbors of the New England coast, and the ocean drive in Newport is in itself incomparable.

For its company on the day of a great social function it is quite as incomparable. Hyde Park, the Bois, the Cascine, the Prater, show no such sumptuous display. If the street boy were a philosopher, he would say, probably, as he watched the spectacle, "My eyes! money plays here for all it is worth." The American street boy of every degree is not supposed to need any stronger impression of the value of money than he already possesses. But Newport is the great school for that instruction, and it is open free to the whole world. Money elsewhere has the same instincts and desires. But in a city, in winter, its sports and effects, however splendid, are divided and hidden. In summer Newport they are concentrated under most fortunate conditions and proceed in the open air.

It is all the more striking because money has built its summer city close by and just above one of the oldest and most historic of our cities. It has improvised its magnificence and mad profusion upon the outskirts of simplicity and moderation are observant, for all their plainness. When they were asked what effect the new town produced upon the old, whether the rollicking city on the hill harmed or helped the plodding seaport, they answered: "Until Crœsus and Midas came, it was beneficial. But they have ruined Newport."

Perhaps not, however. The Newport on the hill of to-day is the legitimate offspring of the earlier summer retreat. That was a group of the select who came to Newport to enjoy themselves for the summer. They were well-to-do, some of them. But not many dwelt in cottages. The multitude lived in hotels. They danced, they dined, they drove, they sauntered. It was the green tree. It was less money enjoying itself as more money enjoys itself now. The gossip, the flirting, the display were not of another kind, they were the same as to-day,