brow of an abrupt bank, looking in the distance like an old French auberge. It is the county poor-house, and rising in the midst of a prosperous country, tells us that even under the most favorable circumstances, within a young and vigorous society, there must be poor among us, some the victims of their own follies or vices, some the victims of those of others.
The valley becomes broader and more level about four or five miles from the village; a hamlet has grown up here about an Academy, founded early in the history of the county, by a Lutheran clergyman, who has left his name to the spot. Farmhouses and cottages are springing up here along the highway in close neighborhood, for a mile or more. Many of these, painted white, with green blinds, and pleasant door-yards, and a garden adjoining, look very neat and cheerful. Green-house plants, geraniums, callas, cactuses, &c., &c., are seen on these cottage porches at this season; they are much prized during the long winter, and something of the kind is found in many houses. A very broad field, remarkably level for this part of the world, lies on one side of the highway; sugar-maples line the road here, and they bear marks of having been tapped for the sap, thus serving the double purpose of a pleasant, shady avenue, and a sugar-bush where the trees are close at hand. A burying-ground lies at one corner of the broad field, and a little meeting-house at the farther point. But the great edifice of the hamlet is of course the Academy, a brick building, colored gray, flanked by wings, with a green before its doors, and a double row of maples, planted in a semicircle, forming its academic shades. The institution was endowed by the Lutheran clergyman, a German by birth, who was the original owner of a small patent covering this
