This picturesque and beautiful burial-place occupies a grove, formerly an academic and sylvan retreat for the students of Harvard College, near by. It is about five miles from Boston, and presents naturally a most agreeable mixture of hill, valley, and water, forming altogether the beau-ideal of a site for the purpose to which it is at present devoted. If we are not mistaken, the people of the United States owe the most creditable and delicate taste, newly awakened throughout the country on the subject of sepulture, to one of their most distinguished poets, the Rev. John Pierpoint, author of the “Airs of Palestine.” By his exertions, mainly, a society was formed for the purchase, appropriation, and improvement, of the beautiful spot represented in the drawing; and, at present, most of the wealthier citizens of the capital of New England are possessors of verdant and flowery enclosures, which are ornamented even more tastefully than the celebrated cemeteries of Père la Chaise. In doing away thus with the neglectfulness and dreariness of the outer aspect of the grave, death, it seems to us, is divested of half its terrors, while a refined and salutary feeling is awakened in the bosoms of the living. The example of this cemetery has been followed in other cities; and at Philadelphia, particularly, there is a most sweet spot selected upon the banks of the Schuylkill, and appropriated to this purpose. The refinement has spread all over the country; and in a few years, probably, the burial of the dead will be associated in the minds of the people of the United States only with sylvan repose, and the sacred loveliness of consecrated natural beauty. [Illustration] NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS. * * * * * It is recorded of the first settlers of Northampton, that in the tenth year of their establishment in the wilderness, in 1663, they paid for the support of a clergyman one hundred and twenty pounds sterling. According to the change in the value of money, and the circumstances of the persons who formed the congregation, this sum was equal to at least six times the amount of the present valuation. In this one fact is to be found a leaven which has pervaded the town ever since, preserving for its inhabitants the rigid morality, the religious feeling, and almost the stern manners of the Puritan pilgrims. The inflexible justice practised among such men had its effect on the Indians among whom they settled; and Northampton, in consequence, was one of the last towns affected by the general hostilities of Philip’s war. In their first purchases, they secured no less their own rights than the rights of the natives; and the latter were always considered as having a right to dwell and hunt in the lands they had sold. In the year 1664, they requested leave of the settlers to build themselves a fort within the town; and leave was granted on the following conditions:—