SARA H. BROWNE.
Sara Hall Browne, the subject of this sketch, was born in Sunderland, Massachusetts, during one of those calamitous periods which not unfrequently interrupt the prosperity of families, where the husband and father is engaged in the mercantile profession. A series of misfortunes and losses had reduced her parents, at the time of her birth, to circumstances of difficulty and embarrassment, which ultimately led to the abandonment of trade for the safer and surer pursuit of agriculture. With this design they removed to Hyde Hillside, a pleasant maternal estate in the retired town of Templeton, Massachusetts, which has ever since been the family residence.
A very quiet place is the Hillside; beautiful and picturesque in its environments. Sequestered like a nest among the hills, it is a sweet, wild, rural abode, every way fitted to be a child’s paradise, and the nursery and school of that species of genius which feasts on natural beauty and unfolds most successfully in solitude.
Hyde Hillside is, some might affirm, a very lonely abode, on the southern slope of a rocky hill, yet surrounded by scenery of remarkable beauty. On the east, the descent is quite abrupt for a few hundred yards to a beautiful expanse of water, partly lying in the shadow of dark pine woods, and again spread out in the sunshine, sparkling like a lake of molten diamonds. Another hill rises from this watery interval, with a smooth and gradual ascent, for a mile or two, on the summit of which stands the pleasant village of Templeton, in full view, with its trees, its church spires, and its white dwellings.
Mount Monadnock rises, hoary and cloud-capped, to the north, while on the south and west the prospect is bounded by hill and woodland.
The venerable ancestral mansion is a large commodious dwelling, which has offered the hospitalities of nearly a century to friend and stranger.
