is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run
across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we
have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to
aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and
pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aërian. But let Young
America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of
young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate
pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most
exquisite arrangement of arches and tracery can be seen. Six or eight
elms, their long bending boughs clothed with thick, clinging leafage,
mingle their tops, forming a sort of vaulted roof, such as at the
intersection of nave and transepts occurs in every Gothic church which
has no central tower. More exquisite curves, better studies for a
healthy-minded and original architect, could hardly be found. The
interlacing branches are suggestive of tracery-patterns, not to be
outdone even in the flamboyant windows of York and Rouen. There is no
excuse for the squat, ugly, and stupid arches one sees in almost every
attempt at pointed architecture, when the elm-tree springs by every
riverside in the land.

But it is time to conclude our desultory rambles. It would be pleasant
to me to recall many another of my old haunts, spots which, perhaps,
were never called beautiful before now, and may not be again for many a
day. For they all lie in a very tame and prosaic country, nearly level,
the utmost elevation getting hardly a couple of hundred feet above
tidewater mark; a country with less natural beauty than belongs to most
New England towns,--bare, bleak, rocky, with stunted vegetation and
ungenial soil. Yet within its limits there are brooks and marshes and
copses and woodlands,--rocks over which the wild columbine hangs its
fuchsia-like pendants, and dells where nestle the earliest and sweetest