hant at the capital of the State. A conspicuous house standing upon a
gentle elevation, at some distance from the street, with pleasant grounds
in its front and rear, was appropriately named by its original proprietor
"Mount Rural," though not, perhaps, with the most exact observance of the
requirements of grammatical construction. Still, it has some authority
for being considered idiomatic, for does not "Pilgrim's Progress" tell us
of the "Palace Beautiful?" And doubtless many other instances might be
cited of the substitution of an adjective for a noun. At all events, the
worthy owner, who built his house in the most approved style of former
New England architecture, spacious, square, and with projecting windows
in the roof, made some pretensions to classical allusion; for cultivating
extensive gardens in the rear of his dwelling, he placed for an
inscription on his front wall,--

"Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma,"--

a citation which, it is to be feared, would be taken rather as
encouragement to mischievous urchins, if any of them understood it,
rather than as a warning to abstain from the fruit.

Near the extremity of the opposite quarter of the town still stands an
ancient edifice of solid stone, with a couple of stories of porch of the
same material, approached by a lane, bordered with trees, leading some
distance from the highway, and constituting, with some modern additions,
the dwelling-place of a considerable farm. It boasts an age of more than
two centuries, as appears by the figures above its entrance, and was
apparently built for defence, when precautions against Indian incursions
were thought necessary, though afterwards used as a powder-house; and
tradition has it that, on one occasion, an explosion took place by
night, which blew away a part of the side wall, lifted the bed on which a
negro woman, the slave of the occupant, was asleep, bore her safely
across the road, and planted her, bed and all, upon the spreading
branches of an apple-tree, without injury. An early owner of the place
was the ancestor of one of the recent Presidents of the United States,
and it was known, until quite a modern period, as the PIERCE Farm.

Not many years ago, there still remained at the corner of a street,
between the points just designated, one of those ancient houses not
common in this country, the second story resting on heavy beams, which
showed themselves in the outside walls, and the walls of