Page:Rural Hours.djvu/536

Rh a just reward of their exertions that the names given by them should be preserved. But this privilege can only be claimed in the earliest stages of discovery. Those who come after and fill up the map, have not the same excuse. They have more time for reflection, and a better opportunity for learning the true character of a country in its details, and consequently should be better judges of the fitness of things.

And yet it is a mortifying fact that in this and in some other points, perhaps, public taste has deteriorated rather than improved in this country; the earlier names were better in their way than those of a later date. The first colonists showed at least common sense and simplicity on this subject; it was a natural feeling which led them to call their rude hamlets along the shores of the Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bays after their native homes in the Old World; and although these are but repetitions, one would not wish them changed, since they sprang from good feeling, and must always possess a certain historical interest. But a continued, frequent repetition not only wears away all meaning, but it also becomes very inconvenient. After the Revolution, when we set up for ourselves, then was the moment to make a change in this respect; the old colonial feeling had died away, and a good opportunity offered for giving sensible, local names to the new towns springing up throughout the country; but alas, then came the direful invasion of the ghosts of old Greeks and Romans, headed by the Yankee schoolmaster, with an Abridgment of Ancient History in his pocket. It was then your Troys and Uticas, your Tullys and Scipios, your Romes and Palmyras, your Homers and Virgils, were dropped about the country in scores. As a proof that the earlier names were far better than most of those given to-day, we