The villages of New England are all more or less beautiful; and the most beautiful of them all is, I believe, Northampton. They have all the graceful weeping elm; wide roads overshadowed with wood; mounds or levels of a rich verdure; white churches and comfortable and picturesque frame dwellings. Northampton has these beauties and more. It lies in the rich meadows which border the Connecticut, beneath the protection of high wooded hills. The habitations of its gentry crown the green knolls and terraces on which the village stands; or are half buried in gay gardens, or hid under clumps of elm. The celebrated Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom are just at hand, and the Sugarloaf is in view; while the brimming Connecticut winds about and about in the meadows, as if unwilling, like the traveller, to leave such a spot.

The pilgrims were not long in discovering the promise of the rich alluvial lands amidst which Northampton stands; and their descendants established themselves there, as in the midst of a wilderness, long before there were any settlements between the spot on which they had sat down and the coast.