i go OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



walls, and rarely vacant spaces about our commercial 

 centres, these pleasant breathing-places must be 

 pushed into the outskirts of our towns. I say rarely 

 vacant spaces ; but while I write, there occur to me 

 instances of beautiful opportunities neglected, one of 

 which, at least, I will record. The thriving little city 

 of Norwich, in eastern Connecticut, is situated at the 

 confluence of two rivers, which form the Thames. 

 Along either shore of the Yantic and the Shetucket, 

 the houses of the town are picturesquely strewed in 

 patches of white and gray ; but between the rivers 

 and the lines of houses, the land rises into a great 

 promontory of hill toward the east, forming a Sal- 

 vator-Rosa cliff, shaggy with brush- wood and cedars 

 toward the south and west, a steep declivity on which 

 the swiftly slanting sward-land is spotted with out- 

 cropping ledges ; to the north a gradual slope falls 

 easily away to the great plains, where lie the bulk of 

 the suburban residences. Within twenty or thirty 

 years the whole upper surface of this central hillock 

 might have been secured for the merest bagatelle, and 

 would have made one of the proudest public prome- 

 nades imaginable, accessible to all walkers from the 

 south and east, and to all equipages from the north, 

 and offering level plateau for drives that would have 

 commanded the most enchanting of views ; but the 

 occasion has gone by; inferior houses hold their 



