Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/46

 XXXVlll INTRODUCTION.

few feet of the way, and has a southerly aspect. It has two full stories in front, but slopes to a single one in the rear. The rooms on both sides of the front door are high-studded, the floor having been sunk not long since. The doors are small, and very low. The walls of some of the rooms are wainscotted, while others are papered in the modern style. The frame of the house is very heavy, with massive old timbers ; and an immense chimney, strongly buttressed on its four sides, runs up in the centre. On the lawn in front of the house are some beautiful elms, one of which is noted for its unusual size.* The ground, falling abruptly from the easterly side of the house into a deep hollow where there is a little brook, rises again into a hill on the slope of which once stood the meeting-house, not a vestige of which is now left. Opposite its site is the old burying- ground, an irregular lot, sparsely covered with ancient moss-grown stones, in all positions straggling, broken, and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds. Some few, including several tombs with horizontal slabs, are more modern and better preserved. The Merrimac is but a mile and a quarter distant, and the Cochichewick is quite near.

The views from the hill-tops in the vicinity are charming, though it is difficult to imagine the appearance the town presented when it was first settled, and there was an unbro- ken circle of woods in every direction." Now the visitor has to gaze on the smooth sides of the green hills, the coun- try sparsely covered with houses, and the long line of the

half feet in circumference, atone foot above the ground. Abbot's Andover, p. 195. A view of the house is given in the frontispiece.
 * This tree, more than twenty-five j'ears ago, measured sixteen and a

�� �