488 
RURAL HOURS. 
a just reward of their exertions that the names given by them 
should be preserved. But this privilege can only be claimed in 
the earliest stages of discovery. Those who come after and fill up 
the map, have not the same excuse. They have more time for 
reflection, and a better opportunity for learning the true character 
of a country in its details, and consequently should be better 
judges of the fitness of things. 
And yet it is a mortifying fact that in this and in some other 
points, perhaps, public taste has deteriorated rather than improved 
in this country ; the earlier names were better in their way than 
those of a later date. The first colonists showed at least common 
sense and simplicity on this subject ; it was a natural feeling 
which led them to call their rude hamlets along the shores of the 
Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bays after their native homes in 
the Old World ; and although these are but repetitions, one would 
not wish them changed, since they sprang from good feeling, and 
must always possess a certain historical interest. But a continued, 
frequent repetition not only wears away all meaning, but it also 
becomes very inconvenient. After the Revolution, when we set 
up for ourselves, then was the moment to make a change in this 
respect ; the old colonial feeling had died away, and a good op- 
portunity offered for giving sensible, local names to the new towns 
springing up throughout the country ; but alas, then came the 
direful invasion of the ghosts of old Greeks and Romans, headed 
by the Yankee schoolmaster, with an Abridgment of Ancient Histo- 
ry in his pocket. It was then your Troys and Uticas, your Tullys 
and Scipios, your Romes and Palmyras, your Homers and Virgils, 
were dropped about the country in scores. As a proof that the 
earlier names were far better than most of those given to-day, we 
