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 sion that bespoke the quality of the soil, and the comparative facilities of intercourse. Immediately on the bank of the lake, stood the village of Templeton. It consisted of about fifty buildings, including those of every description, chiefly built of wood, and which, in their architecture, bore not only strong marks of the absence of taste, but also, by the slovenly and unfinished appearance of most of the dwellings, indicated the hasty manner of their construction. To the eye, they presented a variety of colours. A few were white in both front and rear, but more bore that expensive colour on their fronts only, while their economical but ambitious owners had covered the remaining sides of their edifices with a dingy red. One or two were slowly assuming the russet of age; while the uncovered beams that were to be seen through the broken windows of their second stories, showed, that either the taste, or the vanity of their proprietors, had led them to undertake a task which they were unable to accomplish. The whole were grouped together in a manner that aped the streets of a city, and were evidently so arranged, by the directions of one, who looked far ahead to the wants of posterity, rather than to the convenience of the present incumbents. Some three or four of the better sort of buildings, in addition to the uniformity of their colour, were fitted with green blinds, that were rather strangely contrasted to the chill aspect of the lake, the mountains, the forests, and the wide fields of snow. Before the doors of these pretending dwellings, were placed a few saplings either without branches, or possessing only the feeble shoots of one or two summers' growth, that looked not unlike tall grenadiers on post, near the threshold of princes. In truth, the occupants of these favoured habitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Mar-