ate,
than can be obtained from incidental allusions. We undertake the
office more readily because this is not one of those places that
shoot up in a day, under the unnatural efforts of speculation, or
which, favoured by peculiar advantages in the way of trade, becomes a
precocious city, while the stumps still stand in its streets; but a
sober county town, that has advanced steadily, _pari passu_ with the
surrounding country, and offers a fair specimen of the more regular
advancement of the whole nation, in its progress towards
civilization.

The appearance of Templeton, as seen from the height where it is now
exhibited to the reader, was generally beautiful and map-like. There
might be a dozen streets, principally crossing each other at right-
angles, though sufficiently relieved from this precise delineation,
to prevent a starched formality. Perhaps the greater part of the
buildings were painted white, as is usual in the smaller American
towns; though a better taste was growing in the place, and many of
the dwellings had the graver and chaster hues of the grey stones of
which they were built. A general air of neatness and comfort pervaded
the place, it being as unlike a continental European town, south of
the Rhine, in this respect, as possible, if indeed we except the
picturesque bourgs of Switzerland. In England, Templeton would be
termed a small market-town, so far as size was concerned; in France,
a large _bourg_; while in America it was, in common parlance, and
legal appellation, styled a village.

Of the dwellings of the place, fully twenty were of a quality that
denoted ease in the condition of their occupants, and bespoke the
habits of those accustomed to live in a manner superior to the _oi
polloi_ of the human race. Of these, some six or eight had small
lawns, carriage sweeps, and the other similar appliances of houses
that were not deemed unworthy of the honour of bearing names of their
own. No less than five little steeples, towers, or belfries, for
neither word is exactly suitable to the architectural prodigies we
wish to describe, rose above the roofs, denoting the sites of the
same number of places of worship; an American village usually
exhibiting as many of these proofs of liberty of conscience--
_caprices of conscience_ would perhaps be a better term--as dollars
and cents will by any process render attainable. Several light
carriages, such as were suitable to a mountainous country, were
passing to