ugh grass to clothe the hills, enough trees
to drop the shadow, enough society to keep one from inanity, and enough
quietude to soothe twelve months of perturbation. The sea hums us to sleep
at night, and fills our dreams with intimations of the land where the
harmony is like "the voice of many waters." In smooth weather the billows
take a minor key; but when the storm gives them the pitch, they break forth
with the clash and uproar of an overture that fills the heavens and makes
the beach tremble. Strange that that which rolls perpetually and never
rests itself should be a psalm of rest to others! With these sands of the
beach we help fill the hour-glass of life. Every moment of the day there
comes in over the waves a flotilla of joy and rest and health, and our
piazza is the wharf where the stevedores unburden their cargo. We have
sunrise with her bannered hosts in cloth of gold, and moonrise with her
innumerable helmets and shields and swords and ensigns of silver, the
morning and the night being the two buttresses from which are swung a
bridge of cloud suspended on strands of sunbeam, all the glories of the sky
passing to and fro with airy feet in silent procession.

We have wandered far and wide, but found no such place to rest in. We can
live here forty-eight hours in one day, and in a night get a Rip Van Winkle
sleep, waking up without finding our gun rusty or our dog dead.

No wonder that Mr. James, the first minister of this place, lived to eighty
years of age, and Mr. Hunting, his successor, lived to be eighty-one years
of age, and Doctor Buel, his successor, lived to be eighty-two years of
age. Indeed, it seems impossible for a minister regularly settled in this
place to get out of the world before his eightieth year. It has been only
in cases of "stated supply," or removal from the place, that early demise
has been possible. And in each of these cases of decease at fourscore it
was some unnecessary imprudence on their part, or who knows but that they
might be living yet? That which is good for settled pastors being good for
other people, you may judge the climate here is salutary and delectable for
all.

The place was settled in 1648, and that is so long ago that it will
probably never be unsettled. The Puritans took possession of it first, and
have always held it for the Sabbath, for the Bible and for God. Much
maligned Puritans! The world will stop deriding them after a while, and the
caricaturists of the