Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New-England farmer. And—go where one will the world over—I know of no race of men who, taken as a whole, possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of those elements of comfort which go to make a home beloved and the social basis firm, than the New-England farmers.

They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined; they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; they know only so much of older nations as their histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable world they hold no place;—but in energy, in industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, and in manly independence, they make up a race that is hard to be matched.

The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of intelligence and sterling worth, infants compared with them; and the farmers of England are either the merest 'ockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their sacks, samples, and market-days,—or, with added cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly as that their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and are to be left to their cattle and the goad.

There are English farmers indeed, who are men in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the current of the year's intelligence; but such men are the exceptions. In New England, with the school upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting church to watch every valley with week-day quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound, the men become, as a class, bold, intelligent, and honest actors, who would make again, as they have made before, a terrible army of defence,—and who would find reasons for their actions as strong as their armies.

Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely but neat. Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy for the gewgaws of foreign importation, and makes it a point to appear always in the village church, and on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun. He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none. He is known as the Squire throughout the township; and no important measure can pass the board of selectmen without the Squire's approval;—and this from no blind subserviency to his opinion,—because his farm is large, and he is reckoned "forehanded,"—but because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the country parson, or of the schoolmaster, or of the village doctor; and although the latter is a testy politician of the opposite party, it does not all impair the Squire's faith in his calomel; he suffers all his Radicalism with the same equanimity that he suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the small farmers, consider the Squire's note-of-hand for their savings better than the best bonds of city origin; and they seek his advice in all matters of litigation. He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire in a New-England village implies; and many are the sessions of the country courts that you peep upon with Frank, from the door of the great dining-room.

The defendant always seems to you in these important cases—especially if his beard is rather long—an extraordinary ruffian, to whom Jack Sheppard would have been a comparatively innocent boy. You watch curiously the old gentleman sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver case at his elbow, and his snuffbox in hand, listening attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply,—with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and you listen with intense admiration as he gives a loud preparatory "Ahem!" and clears away the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which distinguishes the New-England farmer,—getting at the very hinge of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision, and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk as much as by the leniency of his judgment.

His lands lie along those swelling hills, which in southern New England carry the chain of the White and Green Mountains in gentle undulations to the borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred acres,—"suitably divided," as the old-school agriculturists say, into "woodland, pasture, and tillage." The farm-house—a large, irregularly-built mansion of wood—stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the scattered pasture lands of the hills; opposite to this and across the farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land, which rolls with a heavy "ground-swell" along the valley of a mountain river. A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate, its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer-time with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking scythes.

The high-road passes a stone's-throw away; but there is little "travel" to be seen; and every chance passer will inevitably come under the range of the kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes of the stout dairy-maid,—to say nothing of the stalwart Indian cook.

This last you cannot but admire as a type of that noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how she must regard the white interlopers upon her own soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's farming privileges with more modesty than you would suppose. You learn however that she pays very little regard to white rights—when they conflict with her own; and further learn, to your deep regret, that your Princess of the old tribe is sadly addicted to cider-drinking; and having heard her once or twice with a very indistinct "Goo-er night, Sq-quare" upon her lips, your dreams about her grow very tame.

The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his hobbies and peculiarities. He has a great contempt, for instance, for all paper money, and imagines banks to be corporate societies skilfully contrived for the legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply of silver and gold by him in the foot of an old stocking, and seems to have great confidence in the value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig, and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists, and has far more respect for the contents of his barnyard than for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he says, "to keep idle young fellows from the city out of mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot until they were ten, and who count the hard winters by their frozen toes." And he is fond of quoting in this connection—the only quotation, by the by, that the old gentleman ever makes—that couplet of "Poor Richard,"—

"He, that by the plough would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive."

The Squire has been in his day connected more or less intimately with turnpike enterprise, which the railroads of the day have thrown sadly into the background; and he reflects often in a melancholy way upon the good old times when a man could travel in his own carriage quietly across the country, without being frightened with the clatter of an engine, and when turnpike stock paid wholesome yearly dividends of six per cent.

An almost constant hanger-on about the premises, and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged man, with a heavy-bearded face, to whom Frank introduces you as "Captain Dick"; and he tells you moreover that he is a better butcher, a better wall-layer, and cuts a broader "swathe," than any man upon the farm. Beside all which he has an immense deal of information. He knows in the spring where all the crows'-nests are to be found; he tells Frank where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership of every stray heifer that appears upon the road: indeed scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous consultation with "Captain Dick."

You have an extraordinary respect for Captain Dick: his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waistcoat, and cowhide boots, only add to it: you can compare your regard for him only with the sentiments you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and families!

A superannuated old greyhound lives about the premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin nose into your hands in a very affectionate manner.

Of course, in your way, you are a lion among the boys of the neighborhood: a blue jacket that you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their especial wonderment. You astonish them moreover with your stories of various parts of the world which they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the dusk after supper under the old oaks; and you delight them in turn with some marvellous tale of South-American reptiles out of Peter Parley's books.

In all this your new friends are men of observation; while Frank and yourself are comparatively men of reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find yourself a long way before them; and you talk of problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a way that sets them all agape.

As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather stagger your notions of propriety; nor can you wholly get over their out-of-the-way pronunciation of some of the vowels. Frank however has a little cousin,—a toddling, wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing; poor Fanny is stone-blind! Your pity leans toward her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor; and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the clear, blue sky, with the same sad, painful vacancy.

And yet—it is very strange!—she does not grieve: there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip,—a smile, that will come to you in your fancied troubles of after-life with a deep voice of reproach.

Altogether you grow into a liking of the country: your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and the sparkles of dew that at sunrise cover the hills with diamonds; and the wild river, with its black-topped, loitering pools; and the shaggy mists that lie in the nights of early autumn like unravelled clouds, lost upon the meadow. You love the hills, climbing green and grand to the skies, or stretching away in distance their soft, blue, smoky caps, like the sweet, half-faded memories of the years behind you. You love those oaks, tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven with a spirit and a strength that kindles your dawning pride and purposes, and that makes you yearn, as your forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit and a kindred strength. Above all you love—though you do not know it now—the Breadth of a country life. In the fields of God's planting there is Room. No walls of brick and mortar cramp one; no factitious distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches of the spirit tend toward the True and the Natural. The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all give width to your intent. The boy grows into manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He claims—with tears almost of brotherhood—his kinship with Nature; and he feels in the mountains his heirship to the Father of Nature!

This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon the lip of the boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and will without his consciousness give the spring to his musing dreams.

----So it is, that, as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land, with huge granaries, and cosy old mansion sleeping under the trees, shall be yours,—when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture-lands,—when the clouds shall shed their spring fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths.

You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and your snuffbox. You will be the happy and respected husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,—a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,—and an accomplished cook of stewed pears and Johnny-cakes!

It seems a very lofty ambition at this stage of growth to reach such eminence, as to convert your drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a bank for the country people; and the power to send a man to jail seems one of those stretches of human prerogative to which few of your fellow-mortals can ever hope to attain.

----Well, it may all be. And who knows but the Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted by the same spirit and freedom of nature that is around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking you through the spring and the summer of Youth, we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily and solemnly in the very fields where you wanton to-day?

This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach far-away shores with their bones.

That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life, may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this mountain home of New England; and that very willow yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully your grave!