Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/17

 and a prudence which as resolutely frowned upon waste of time, as waste of money. It has been thought that the advantages, arising from a favourable situation for commerce, and from a surrounding country eminently agricultural, languished for want of vigorous enterprize. Yet a source of wealth still less fluctuating has been discovered, in lessening the number of factitious wants, and pruning the excrescences of fashion and of folly. A more moral state of society can scarcely be imagined, than that which existed within the bosom of these rocks. Almost it might seem as if their rude summits, pointing in every direction, had been commissioned to repel the intrusion of vice. In this department of the town was the mansion of Madam L. It raised its broad, dignified front, without other decorations than the white rose, and the sweet brier, rearing their columns of beauty and fragrance, quite to the projection of the roof. In front, was a court of shorn turf, like the richest velvet, intersected by two paved avenues to the principal entrances, and enclosed by a white fence, resting upon a foundation of hewn stone. On each side of the antiquated gate waved the boughs of a spruce, intermingling their foliage, and defying, in their evergreen garb, the changes of climate. The habitation, which faced the rising sun, had on its left, and in the rear of its long range of offices, two large gardens for vegetables and fruit. A third, which had a southern exposure, and lay beneath the windows of the parlour, was partially devoted to flowers. There, in quadrangles,