The roads that wind along at the foot of the
mountain are discernible; and the villages, lying separate and
unconscious of one another, each with their little knot of peculiar
interests, but all gathered into one category by the observer above
them. White spires, and the white glimmer of hamlets, perhaps a dozen
miles off. The gleam of lakes afar, giving life to the whole landscape.
Much wood, shagging hills and plains. On the west, a hill-country,
swelling like waves, with these villages sometimes discovered among
them. On the east it looks dim and blue, and affects the beholder like
the sea, as the eye stretches far away. On the north (?) appears
Monadnock, in his whole person, discernible from the feet upwards,
rising boldly and tangibly to the sense, so that you have the figure
wholly before you, fair and blue, but not dim and cloudlike.
On the road from Princeton to Fitchburg we passed fields which were
entirely covered with the mountain-laurel in full bloom,--as splendid a
spectacle, in its way, as could be imagined. Princeton is a little town,
lying on a high ridge, exposed to all the stirrings of the upper air,
and with a prospect of a score of miles round about. The great family of
this place is that of the Boylstons, who own Wachusett, and have a
mansion, with good pretensions to architecture, in Princeton.
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