"Soon after this, happened the direful conflagration of this city, when, taking notice of our want of books of architecture in the English tongue, I published those most useful directions of ten of the best authors on that subject, whose works were very rarely to be had, all written in French, Latin, or Italian, and so not intelligible to our mechanics. What the fruit of that labor and cost has been, (for the sculptures, which are elegant, were very chargeable,) the great improvement of our workmen and several impressions of the copy since will best testify. "In this method I thought proper to begin planting trees, because they would require time for growth, and be advancing to delight and shade at least, and were, therefore, by no means to be neglected and deferred, while buildings might be raised and finished in a summer or two, if the owner pleased. "Thus, Madam, I endeavored to do my countrymen some little service, in as natural an order as I could for the improving and adorning of their estates and dwellings, and, if possible, make them in love with those useful and innocent pleasures, in exchange for a wasteful and ignoble sloth which I had observed so universally corrupted an ingenious education. "To these I likewise added my little history of Chalcography, a treatise of the perfection of painting and of libraries, medals, with some other intermesses which might divert within doors as well as altogether without." PASTORALS. SATURDAY, 8. False were the muse, did she not bring Our village poet's offering-- Haunts, fields, and groves, weaving his rhymes, Leaves verse and fame to coming times. Is it for the reason that rural life here in New England furnishes nothing for pastoral verse, that our poets have as yet produced so little? Yet we cannot have had almost three centuries' residence on this side of the Atlantic, with old England's dialect, traditions, and customs still current in our rural districts for perspective, not to have so adorned life and landscape with poetic associations as to have neither honey nor dew for hiving in sweet and tender verse, though it should fall short of the antique or British models. Our fields and rivers, brooks and groves, the rural occupations of country-folk, have not been undeserving of being celebrated in appropriate verse. Our forefathers delighted in Revolutionary lore. We celebrate natural scenery, legends of foreign climes, historic events, but rarely indulge in touches of simple country life. And the idyls of New England await their poet, unless the following verses announce his arrival:-- NEW ENGLAND. "My country, 'tis for thee I strike the lyre; My country, wide as is the free wind's flight, I prize New England as she lights her fire In every Prairie's midst; and where the bright Enchanting stars shine pure through Southern night, She still is there the guardian on the tower, To open for the world a purer hour.