There are quaint
gardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with iron
gracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always
with their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keeps
rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growth
caught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the right
magic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps
like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling
little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and
such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having
been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by
ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past
and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the
ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by
soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge
gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or
a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising
slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach
a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at
intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probable
aspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for
the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds of
spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspiration
that alike found expression on this soil.
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