world; but now, what with the unwonted preparations on foot, the meetings of citizens and committees of citizens, and the voluminous correspondence carried on between the managers in town and the managers here, all our sobriety is turned upside down; every body has a hand in the matter, and every body is running to keep ahead of the progress of events. Generally every thing goes on smoothly enough: now and then, indeed, some burly old publican, snuffing at some fancied innovation upon established customs, will bolt out of the path; but a few kind words soon bring him into humor again, and he harnesses to the work.

'Not only in Pittsfield, but all over the county, has prevailed this same unanimity in forwarding arrangements for the jubilee. One cannot but notice with pleasure how readily old prejudices are surmounted, when the better feelings of the heart are called into action. In former times Pittsfield held but a subordinate place, and being still in the gristle of its prosperity, and having withal a 'Mind-your-concerns and-I-will-mind-mine' sort of an air, was considered by the gentle-folk of the county as well enough in its way indeed, but then a little plebeian, and not to be treated with too much familiarity. As the young town grew into fairer proportions, and began to make a respectable appearance for itself, this feeling gradually died away, until with a new generation Pittsfield began to be considered, as it really was, the leading town of the county. There are those, however, relics of a former age, who still look upon its pretensions to respectability as something parvenu; and some very excellent spinsters, even to this day, though they admit it to be a very well-behaved village in its way, can never be persuaded that it has the true stamp of gentility about it, or that it is quite up to the established standard of refinement.

"To the honor of all our county-folk be it said, however, that in preparation for the jubilee, every spark of jealousy has been extinguished. No sooner was Pittsfield named for the place of holding the festival, than all classes in all parts of Berkshire lent a hand to speed it on. Our minister did not indeed, preach about it, nor did our deacons mention it in the conference; but our minister did head the committee of arrangements, and nobody was more active than one of our deacons in helping every thing forward. All the old men came together and counselled, and all the young men went forward and worked. The ladies gave their influence and aid, and cheered it on by their smiles; the lawyers talked of it to their clients, and the physicians to their patients; the school-master harangued of it to his boys; the poets wrote of it in song; and the fair authoress of Berkshire immortalized it in story.

In all the preparations for the jubilee, nothing strikes one more pleasantly than the good taste which has prevailed throughout the whole. There has been no striving after what is always unattainable in the country; no aping of city festivals; no mawkish sensitiveness, lest there should be a falling below a city standard. We are a country people; and so far from being ashamed of the appellation, or abashed by the side of city-folk, we are willing to set our Berkshire villages, whether in education, in refinement, or in wealth, in contrast with any commercial metropolis in the country. Our jubilee is to be throughout a country festival; the welcome we shall give our guests a hearty country welcome. They will be mostly our own county-boys, or better still, our own county-girls, grown to the stature of men and women indeed, but still the same boys and girls in heart who left us years ago for the wide world, and are now to return on a visit to the old homestead firesides.

The President of our college, himself born and bred in Berkshire, a noble specimen of what a country boy can be at home, is to give the public welcome. What that welcome will be, those who have known his heart or his intellect need not be told. To others of our county sons and daughters; to SPENCER, BRYANT and DEWEY, to SEDGWICK and BACON, rumor assigns other distinguished parts, enough at least to insure a literary banquet for hosts and guests during the days of the gathering. Every house is made ready for the reception of friends from abroad, and with the exception of the dinner of the second day, the festivities are intended to be eminently social. That dinner also is in character

with the rest, saving only that it is to be prepared by a distinguished caterer from our metropolis; the place selected for it, the old cantonment-grounds, being unsurpassed in rural quiet and beauty.

"It is not however for the festivities of the jubilee, nor yet for the sake of greeting old acquaintances and neighbors alone, that we wish our friends to visit us. The boys of Berkshire grew up in the midst of a natural scenery unsurpassed for its various beauty, and we wish them to gaze again upon those objects from which they first learned to love the works of the Great Architect. Old Graylock, which stands as a watch-tower at our northern boundary; the Hoosac and Taughannoc ranges of mountains which shut us in from the world without; the quiet, brook-murmuring Housatonic, with its banks of green hills and greener meadows; the dashing waters of Bish-bash; the winding roads, and thrifty homesteads, and steepled churches; all are here, nearly all as they used to be when the oldest of those who will visit us sought another home. Our broad placid lakes are here, mirroring from their clear depths the sunlight and starlight; and our trout-streams too, so beautiful as you trace them far up among the mountains, now brawling along some rocky ravine, and now spreading into clear limpid pools, that even the gray-haired angler's eye might brighten, as he threw his line across the breezy blue of their wrinkled surface. The same blue sky will bend above them, and the same mother earth spread out beneath; now alas! holding in her embrace the mortal part of friends and loved ones, making her all the dearer.

"The old cemeteries are where they used to be, unencroached upon by the crushing foot of Innovation. There is not a visitant to our jubilee who might not read in the burialplace of his native town the names of nearly all who were familiar to him in boyhood for our population does not change, except in the successive changes of generations, and we bury our dead, not to forget them, but to perpetuate their memories for the example of our children. The pastor and his flock, the lawyer and his clients; the village doctor, the venerable deacon; the sheriff, who in more than a quarter of a century became so identified with his office, that upon his decease it seemed almost desecration to appoint another to his place; the generous landlord; the justice, the school-master, the leader of the villagechoir; all the last generation, saving a few gray-haired lingerers, sleep quietly in the church-yard.* This permanence of population is one of the beautiful features of NewEngland. The children watch over their fathers' graves, as they did over their fathers; then sleep beside them; so that in all our burial-places you can trace back the generations, from son to sire, until you find the grave and history of the first settler of the town.

"This feature in the New-England character gives us an individuality, which, however it may be laughed at abroad, is most beautiful at home. You may know a Yankee every where because he has a home, while the origin of the metropolites and cosmopolites one meets all over the world is as doubtful as the stormy petrel's. Never a Yankee boy yet, whether he were a millionaire in a southern city, or a trapper on the Rocky Mountains, failed to be known by his Yankee peculiarities, or ceased to make his Yankee birth-place foremost in his estimation. To a Yankee absentee or a Yankee denizen nothing is like New-England, and nothing is as good. The schools, the colleges, the forms of religious worship, the customs of life, the habits of thought and feeling, are equalled by none other; and wherever he goes, the native of New-England is never content, until existing forms have been supplied by the better ones he learned to love in boyhood. It is this feeling, common without exception to every son of New-England, that has given rise to our Berkshire Jubilee. It is the same feeling which will give it a zest above every other festival. It is not the commemoration of any long-passed event; not the observance of any religious or national holiday; but the simple return of long-absent children to the rural scenes and social enjoyments of home. Home affections, the strongest and best affections of our nature, which, unlike all others, increasing as we grow older, bind the tired wanderer to his birth

*OUR Burial-Place,' written by Mise SEDGWICK for this Magazine, contained an admirable sketch of this place of sepulture. ED KNICKERBOCKER.

place with cords not to be broken, will draw many far distant absentees to our gathering. We have alluded to the former seclusion of Berkshire county from the great world around it. This is emphatically true. Hemmed in on one side by that long barrier of mountains which divides the waters of the Housatonic from those of the Connecticut, and on the other by the great natural boundaries between Massachusetts and New-York, less has been known of Berkshire county, until within the last few years, than probably of any other portion of New-England. And yet in its arable soil, its natural scenery, and its social refinement, Berkshire is unsurpassed. Both in soil and cultivation, the whole valley is really the garden of the Bay State. Day after day, as the traveller journeys slowly through the county, he will find farm joined to farm, each vieing with the other in fertility, and a succession of comfortable homesteads and thriving hamlets, and neat white villages, not surpassed by the oldest settlements of the sea-board. On every waterfall stands an ever-busy manufactory; sometimes clustering its little dwellings around it in a deep narrow glen, sometimes extending them in a long narrow street on the edge of the steep mountain forest. The uplifted arm of Labor, honest, thriftful labor, meets his eye every where, in the paper-mill, and grist-mill, and saw-mill, and planing-mill, and turningmill; in the excavated lime-kiln and the deep marble-quarry; by the roaring fire of the iron-furnace, and the heavy clank of the trip-hammer.

'An agreeable style of architecture, although one wonders that it is so, obtains very generally through the whole county. It is of a strange composite order, made up of the old puritan palace, as the British soldiers named the great double-parallelogram buildings around Boston, and of the steep-roofed gable-end Dutch domiciles of the last century. There is a neatness however about the whole, an air of home-bred comfort within and of thrift and independence pervading every thing without; so that one forgets all the architectural incongruities in the substantial excellence of the dwellings.

Berkshire county bears a strong resemblance in its natural scenery to the western parts of North-Carolina. The mountain sides and outlines are less rugged, and the deep green of the pastures and meadows throws over the former an air of beauty, which is always missed at the south; but in the tout-ensemble, in the scaurs and seams and bold headlands among the hills, there is a strong affinity between Buncombe county and Berkshire. Whichever may be the most beautiful, it is certain that each in its way could hardly be surpassed. At certain seasons of the year there are points of beauty about Berkshire which it would be difficult to equal. The drive from Pittsfield to Williamstown, on the old road, affords at any season of the year a variety of mountain scenery which is indescribably fine; but in the autumn, when the forest foliage is just changing, and the mellow sunlight is sleeping on tints gorgeous and brilliant as sun-set hues, it is worth a voyage across the Atlantic! At the colleges also in Williamstown, the mountain scenery is commanding, and in some parts of the neighborhood magnificent; the hills rising and swelling around you like huge ocean-billows. In truth, the mountain scenery in every portion of Western Massachusetts is well worth the seeing, and is really far more beautiful and grand than much in other portions of the world that has been celebrated in song and story.

'Mingled among our mountains are our ponds-lakes they would be called every where out of New-England-which are spread out here and there over the valley. You cannot miss them, go whichever way you will; and there is not one which has not its own peculiar attractions, to compensate you for a visit. In the minds of the people they are all individualized, all dear. We love them as we love our mountains, or rather with a gentler love, as the sisters of our mountains. They are all beautiful; some lying in the bosom of hills where scarcely a tree grows, and some surrounded with dark Norway forests, whose solitudes are wild and beautiful as though human foot had never broken them. For them all there is an affection cherished, so connected with the associations of boyhood and manhood, that the heart is linked to them by bonds which nothing but death can break. To select any one of them as most deserving, would be impossible; for like sister graces each in its own way has charms which are unrivalled. Hoosac, Unkamunk, Taughannuc,

Pontoosuc; Mellville Pond, West Pond, Long Pond, and Pike Pond; each one has its admirers, and each one in its way is perfect. Just below Pontoosuc, far enough to make the hum of industry fall pleasantly on the ear, is one of our bustling manufactories, with its stirring life all around; and yet you may thread the dells running far in and out among the hill-banks all day, or muse under the shadow of the island-forests through the noontide, or lying listlessly as the boat rocks on the ripples, greet the rosy-fingered Morning as an old familiar friend, without seeing human face, or hearing human sound, unless it be the distant laugh of children at the school-house, or the carol of some idle fisherman strolling along the shore.

'We have mentioned but very few of the thousand beautiful gifts which Nature has bestowed upon Berkshire, and yet have exceeded the bounds prescribed for a gossipping communication like this. Come and see us! You, Mr. KNICKERBOCKER, Dutchman though you be, and your readers, Dutchmen though they are, come one and all, and see us at the Jubilee! Come from the pent-up atmosphere of the city, and breathe the fresh mountain air of New-England! Come and see our beautiful lakes, our green fields, and our famous trout-brooks, leaping along in the bright sunshine! Above all, come and partake of the generous hospitality of our people; and although your ancestors were sadly worsted- —' (here our friend's manuscript is quite illegible; beside, it's no such thing; 't wasn't so ;) 'forget it all, in consideration of a hearty New-England welcome.'

N. 8. D.

MORE OF THE SEATSFIELDIANA: ADVERTISEMENT. - As many readers of the KNICKERBOCKER, in their vague ideas of the existence of a SEATSFIELD, have looked upon our SEATSFIELDIANA' as apocryphal, the Proprietor of the Journal from which these notes are extracted, would respectfully insist upon their genuineness. He is aware that much of it may seem puerile, and that the minutiae of conversation and manner might be abridged to advantage. For many of the opinions, and much of the criticism too, he is by no means willing to hold himself responsible. But he prefers to give in its simplicity, without curtailment or remodelling, the original memoranda, feeling assured that it is better, even at the risk of offending the few, to give as literal and close a talk-transcript as possible of the odditier-profundities, whims and vivacities, of so remarkable a man. We must look upon SEATSFIELD as the exponent of young America. He is not an individual, but the age; not a myth, but a broad fact. His mission is doubtless to represent the idea of the whole inner habit of man, as it is developed among us. The literature of the North; the generous chivalry of the South; the vast resources of the 'Empire' and 'Key-stone' States; the lone star of Texas, and the grand and growing energies of the West; are all embodied in the fertile soul-grasp of SEATSFIELD. It is only this view of his genius that can excuse the apparent pettiness of some of our chroniclings.

'AFTER refreshment, we smoked together upon the terrace, under the shade of a large linden-tree. Before us, at no great distance, I observed a tall statue, half concealed among some shrubbery. What statue is that?' I inquired.

6

SEATSFIELD: A poor figure of Hygeia. PRIESSNITZ sent to Dresden for it, and paid a round sum too; but it looks as much like Dyspepsia or Consumption as the nymph of Health.

'If we moderns now had the Grecian sentiment, we should canonize a new goddess. Surely we should have a Hydoria,' to represent the divinity of water.'

SEATSFIELD: 'Yes, Sir; and brandy-and-water too deserves

'An apotheosis and rites divine.'

Yes, Sir; depend upon it, in those fond, simple days of old, when men adored what

they loved, and not a theory, not a formula, such a power as that of alcohol would not have been long without its temple-its delubrum. We should have an ode of HORACE'S beginning

'Eau de vie O divina!'

'Santa Cogniaca' I don't think would have sounded badly i' the calendar.'

Our conversation touching this statue led SEATSFIELD to general observations upon art; and I took this opportunity to tow his talk, if I may so express myself, toward the subject of American art. It is astonishing what a race of sculptors we are breeding,' said I.

SEATSFIELD: Not at all. I look upon them as the natural growth of a flourishing republic as far advanced as ours in luxury and refinement. Sparta, it is true, did not produce a great race of artists; but the Spartans were boors, after all. Athens, as a republic, did much; but under her kings, she merely made good copies. The genius of republicanism, that is when it possesses any genius at all, is always original: it borrows from no one but Nature.'

'Do you consider any of our artists truly great?'

SEATSFIELD: 'Unquestionably; the greatest. I look upon GREENOUGH'S WASHINGTON, for instance, which I saw in his studio at Florence, as worthy of the first and purest artistic age of the ancients.'

'How do you rate it, as compared with the Laöcoon and Apollo?' SEATSFIELD: Far before both. As for the much-lauded Venus, 't is beneath all comparison with GREENOUGH's work. Why, Sir, the WASHINGTON is the loftiest creation of the chisel. . I do not say in point of execution and grace, but in grand utterance of inward soullimning.'*

SEATSFIELD: Why, approaching to him-closely approaching. FISK's bust of Mrs. BABCOCK is a glorious thing.'

Here I was obliged to confess that I had never even heard of FISK.

SEATSFIELD: 'No, Sir, I'll be sworn that very few of his countrymen have heard of him. That's it, Sir: we are ignorant of our own resources; we hunt for pearls abroad while we have diamond mines at home. FISK, Sir, is none the less great for never having been heard of. How many people in Vermont have heard of me? But the time will come, and very soon too, when taste will have become universal, and America will duly appreeiate the labors of the high minds of the present generation. Did you ever take notice of the two statues which occupied the niches formerly- I don't know whether they stand there now or not - on the façade of the Tremont-Theatre, in Boston?'

"I remember them. They are down now, the theatre having been sold to some speculating deacons.'

SEATSFIELD: 'Did you not admire them?"

"I confess that I was never particularly struck with their beauty.'

SEATSFIELD: Was you not? Well, I can explain to you why. It must be from a deficiency of eye. Those statues, Sir, though scarcely heeded by the passers-by, were models of art. I look upon them, Sir, as a test of a person's ability to judge of sculpture. If you did not relish them, depend upon it, you lack the power of appreciating art. I consider them a test. There must be a radical deficiency of the art-germ, if you were not struck with them.'

'I never heard them spoken of as great productions.'

'SEATSFIELD: 'Of course not. We, as a people, are deficient in the art-germ. I have even heard those figures laughed at. Sir, had the name of PRAXITELES been engraven on their base, people would have worshipped them.'

*I AM pleased to observe, and would note as a curious coincidence of criticism, in a late number of the Democratic Review,' that the Hon. A. H. EVERETT is of the same opinion.