18 
CAPE COD. 
as a beautiful village. But I think that our villages will 
bear to be contrasted only with one another, not with 
Nature. I have no great respect for the writer’s taste, 
who talks easily about heautiful villages, embellished, 
perchance, with a “ fulling-mill,” a handsome acad¬ 
emy,” or meeting-house, and ‘‘a number of shops for 
the different mechanic arts ”; where the green and white 
houses of the gentry, drawn up in rows, front on a street 
of which it would be difficult to tell whether it is most 
like a desert or a long stable-yard. Such spots can be 
beautiful only to the weary traveller, or the returning na¬ 
tive, — or, perchance, the repentant misanthrope ; not to 
him who, with unprejudiced senses, has just come out of 
the woods, and approaches one of them, by a bare road, 
through a succession of straggling homesteads where he 
cannot tell which is the alms-house. However, as for 
Sandwich, I cannot speak particularly. Ours was but 
half a Sandwich at most, and that must have fallen on 
the buttered side some time. I only saw that it was a 
closely-built town for a small one, with glass-works to 
improve its sand, and narrow streets in which we turned 
round and round till we could not tell which way we 
were going, and the rain came in, first on this side, and 
then on that, and I saw that they in the houses were 
more comfortable than we in the coach. My book also 
said of this town, ‘‘ The inhabitants, in general, are 
substantial livers,” — that is, I suppose, they do not live 
like philosophers; but, as the stage did not stop long 
enough for us to dine, we had no opportunity to test the 
truth of this statement. It may have referred, however, 
to the quantity ‘‘ of oil they would yield.” It further 
said, “ The inhabitants of Sandwich generally manifest a 
fond and steady adherence to the manners, employments, 
