When I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house, which had nopiazza-a deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combiningthe coziness of in-doors with the freedom of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect yourthermometer there, but the country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbshill or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sun-burnt painterspainting there. A very paradise of painters. The circle of the stars cut by the circle of the mountains.At least, so looks it from the house; though, once upon the mountains, no circle of them can yousee. Had the site been [pg 002] chosen five rods off, this charmed ring would not have been.The house is old. Seventy years since, from the heart of the Hearth Stone Hills, they quarried theKaaba, or Holy Stone, to which, each Thanksgiving, the social pilgrims used to come. So long ago, that, in digging for the foundation, the workmen used both spade and axe, fighting the Troglodytesof those subterranean parts-sturdy roots of a sturdy wood, encamped upon what is now a longland-slide of sleeping meadow, sloping away off from my poppy-bed. Of that knit wood, but onesurvivor stands-an elm, lonely through steadfastness.Whoever built the house, he builded better than he knew; or else Orion in the zenith flashed downhis Damocles' sword to him some starry night, and said, "Build there." For how, otherwise, could ithave entered the builder's mind, that, upon the clearing being made, such a purple prospect wouldbe his?-nothing less than Greylock, with all his hills about him, like Charlemagne among his peers.Now, for a house, so situated in such a country, to have no piazza for the convenience of [pg 003]those who might desire to feast upon the view, and take their time and ease about it, seemed asmuch of an omission as if a picture-gallery should have no bench; for what but picture-galleries arethe marble halls of these same limestone hills?-galleries hung, month after month anew, withpictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh. And beauty is like piety-you cannot run and read it;tranquillity and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed. For though, of old, whenreverence was in vogue, and indolence was not, the devotees of Nature, doubtless, used to stand andadore-just as, in the cathedrals of those ages, the worshipers of a higher Power did-yet, in thesetimes of failing faith and feeble knees, we have the piazza and the pew.During the first year of my residence, the more leisurely to witness the coronation of Charlemagne(weather permitting, they crown him every sunrise and sunset), I chose me, on the hill-side banknear by, a royal lounge of turf-a green velvet lounge, with long, moss-padded back; while at thehead, strangely enough, there grew (but, I suppose, for heraldry) [pg 004] three tufts of blue violets in afield-argent of wild strawberries; and a trellis, with honeysuckle, I set for canopy