etter than the old
barracks in which the students of Yale and Harvard reside. Thirty
cheerful and athletic young gentlemen, and half a dozen polite and
learned professors, constitute at present the theological family. The
room in which Mr. Beecher lived is still about fifteen feet by ten, but
it does not present the bare and forlorn appearance it did when he
inhabited it. It is carpeted now, and has more furniture than the pine
table and arm-chair which, tradition informs us, contented him, and
which were the only articles he could contribute towards the furnishing
of his first establishment.

Cincinnati justly boasts of its Spring Grove Cemetery, which now
encloses five hundred acres of this beautiful, undulating land. The
present superintendent has introduced a very simple improvement, which
enhances the beauty of the ground tenfold, and might well be universally
imitated. He has caused the fences around the lots to be removed, and
the boundaries to be marked by sunken stone posts, one at each corner,
which just suffice for the purpose, but do not disfigure the scene. This
change has given to the ground the harmony and pleasantness of a park.
The monuments, too, are remarkable for their variety, moderation, and
good taste. There is very little, if any, of that hideous ostentation,
that _mere_ expenditure of money, which renders Greenwood so melancholy
a place, exciting far more compassion for the folly of the living, than
sorrow for the dead who have escaped their society. We would earnestly
recommend the managers of other cemeteries not to pass within a hundred
miles of Cincinnati without stepping aside to see for themselves how
much the beauty of a burial-ground is increased by the mere removal of
the fences round the lots. It took the superintendent of Spring Grove
several years to induce the proprietors to consent to the removal of
costly fences; but one after another they yielded, and each removal
exhibited more clearly the propriety of the change, and made converts to
the new system. In the same taste he recommends the levelling of the
mounds over the graves, and his advice has been generally followed.

It is very pleasant for the rich people of Cincinnati to live in the
lovely country over the hill, away from the heat and smoke of the town;
but it has its inconveniences also. It is partly because the rich people
are so far away that the public entertainments of the city are so low in
quality and so unfrequent.