[307] Nothing can be imagined more peaceful than the retirement of Sheffield. Removed from the main lines of traffic and travel, even now that a railroad passes through it, the village remains, as it has been for a hundred and fifty years, the quiet centre of the quiet farms spread for four or five miles about it. The Housatonic wanders at its own sweet and lazy will among the meadows, turning and returning upon itself till it has loitered twenty miles in crossing the eight-mile township, but never turning a mill or offering encouragement to any industry but that of the muskrats who burrow in its banks, or the kingfishers who break its glassy surface in pursuit of their prey. No busy factories are there; no rattle of machinery or feverish activity of commerce disturbs the general placidity; and the still valley lies between its enclosing hills as if it were, indeed, that happy Abyssinian vale my father fancied it in his childhood. The people share the calm of the landscape. Like many New England towns where neither water-power nor large capital offers opportunity for manufactures, and where farming brings but slow returns, the village has been gradually drained of the greater part of its active and enterprising younger population, and is chiefly occupied by retired and quiet persons who maintain a very gentle stir of social life, save for a month or two in summer, when the streets brighten with the influx of guests from abroad. [308] It must have been very different seventy years ago. Instead of three slenderly attended churches, divided by infinitesimal differences of creed, and larger variations of government and discipline, all the people then were accustomed to meet in one well-filled church; and the minister, a life resident, swayed church and congregation with large and unquestioned rule. There were several doctors with their trains of students, and lawyers of county celebrity, each with young men studying under his direction; and all these made the nucleus of a society that was both gay and thoughtful, and that received a strong impulse to self-development from the isolated condition of a small village in those days. Railroads and telegraphs have changed all this, and scarcely a hamlet is now so lonely as not to feel the great tides of the world's life sweep daily through it, bringing polish and general information with them, but washing away much of the racy individuality and concentrated mental action which formerly made the pith of its being. Sheffield has gained in external beauty and refinement year by year, but, judging from tradition, has lost in intellectual force. There is more light reading and less hard reading, much more acquaintance with newspapers and magazines, and less knowledge of great poets, than in my father's youth; but his love for his birthplace remained unchanged, and his eyes and his heart drank repose from its peaceful and familiar beauty. [309] To William Cullen Bryant, Esq. ST. DAVID'S, Oct. 6, 1869.