A dozen snug and smiling cottages seem to have been dropped in
this natural cup, as if by a spell of magic. They appear, each of
them, to fill a fitted place--not equally distant from, but equally
near each other. Though distinguished, each by an individual feature,
there is yet no great dissimilarity among them. All are small, and
none of them distinguished by architectural pretension. They are
now quite as flourishing as when first built, and their number has
had no increase since the village was first settled. Speculation
has not made it populous and prosperous, by destroying its repose,
stifling its charities, and abridging the sedate habits and comforts
of its people. The houses, though constructed after the fashion
of the country, of heavy and ill-squared logs, roughly hewn, and
hastily thrown together, perhaps by unpractised hands, are yet made
cheerful by that tidy industry which is always sure to make them
comfortable also. Trim hedges that run beside slender white palings,
surround and separate them from each other. Sometimes, as you see,
festoons of graceful flowers, and waving blossoms, distinguish
one dwelling from the rest, declaring its possession of some fair
tenant, whose hand and fancy have kept equal progress with habitual
industry; at the same time, some of them appear entirely without
the little garden of flowers and vegetables, which glimmers and
glitters in the rear or front of the greater number.

Such was Charlemont, at the date of our narrative. But the traveller
would vainly look, now, to find the place as we describe it. The
garden is no longer green with fruits and flowers--the festoons
no longer grace the lowly portals--the white palings are down and
blackening in the gloomy mould--the roofs have fallen, and silence
dwells lonely among the ruins,--the only inhabitant of the place.