Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/143

Rh being the height of land, from whence the descent is in the same ratio, for the same distance.

Hinsdale, with its manufacturing zeal, and its perpetual clangor of loom and spindle, exhibited the blackened walls of a lofty factory, which the destroying flame had visited, and through which, methought, the whistling winds lectured on the instability of wealth, the favorite deity of our times. The deep excavations for the railroad, made among the rocks at Becket, awaken the surprise of every beholder. The wild, bold hills, so bleak during the storms of winter, and the varied surface of Chester, were radiant with the most splendid specimens of the laurel. Varying from white, through every tint of pink, to an unusually decided red, it thrust its masses of rich efflorescence and dark lustrous foliage before us, as we hurried by, striving to remind us of the Maker.

But the spirit of fire, to which we had intrusted ourselves, was intent only to surmount space. It could not tarry for us to toy with a flower, or to listen to any message that Nature might have for her children. While its continued agency must mark the character of a people with energy, and the consciousness of power, will it not have a tendency to diminish their perception of rural beauty, by abridging their opportunities to cultivate it? While to pass from point to point, with the speed of lightning, is the only aim of the traveller, a newspaper may as well beguile his thoughts as all the blended and glorious charms of mountain, vale, and flood.