This county of valleys, lakes and mountains is yet to be as
celebrated as the lake district of England and the hill country of
Palestine.... Here is such a valley as the ocean would be if, when
its waves were running tumultuous and high, it were suddenly
transformed and solidified.... The endless variety never ceases to
astonish and please.... It is indeed like some choice companion, of
rich heart and genial imagination, never twice alike in mood, in
conversation, in radiant sobriety or half-bright sadness; bold,
tender, deep, various.

One has but to come into the midst of these hills to fall a victim to
their fascination, while to those who were born among them there is no
spot on earth so beautiful or so beloved. They have sent forth
generations of men and women, whose fame is as imperishable as the
marble and granite which form their everlasting foundations. Among the
noted men who have gone out from the Berkshire region are William
Cullen Bryant, Cyrus W. Field and brothers, Jonathan Edwards, Mark and
Albert Hopkins, Senator Henry L. Dawes, Governor Edwin D. Morgan, of
New York, George F. Root, the musical composer, Governor George N.
Briggs, of Massachusetts, Governor and Senator Francis E. Warren, of
Wyoming, the Deweys, the Barnards, a list too long for quoting. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, whose grandfather was a Berkshire man, wrote:

Berkshire has produced a race which, for independent thought,
daring schemes and achievements that have had world-wide
consequences, has not been surpassed. We claim, also, that more of
those first things that draw the chariot of progress forward so
that people can see that it has moved, have been planned and
executed by the inhabitants of the 950 square miles that constitute