An air of snug and substantial comfort hung about many of the older houses, and some localities betokened there was an upper as well as a nether stratum of society in Marblehead. Fine old trees flourished in secluded neighborhoods, where the brass door-knockers shone with unwonted lustre. I think my fingers itched to grasp them, so suggestive were they of feudal times when stranger knight summoned castle-warden by striking with his sword-hilt on the oaken door. Fancy goes in unbidden at their portals, and roves among their cramped corridors and best rooms, peering into closets where choice china is kept, or rummaging among the curious lumber of the garrets, the accumulations of many generations. On the whole, the dwellings represent so far as they may a singular equality of condition. It is only by turning into some court or by-way that you come unexpectedly upon a mansion having about it some relics of a former splendor. Though Marblehead has its Billingsgate, I saw nothing of the squalor of our larger cities; and though it may have its Rotten Row, I remarked neither lackeys nor showy equipages. There are few sidewalks in the older quarter. The streets are too narrow to afford such a luxury, averaging, should say, not more than a rod in width in the older ones, with barely room for a single vehicle. The passer-by may, if he pleases, look into the first-floor sitting-rooms, and see the family gathered at its usual occupations. Whether it be a greater indiscretion to look in at the windows than to look out of them, as the matrons and maidens are in the habit of doing when a stranger is in the neighborhood is a question I willingly remand to the decision of my readers; yet I confess I found the temptation too strong to be resisted. In order to protect those houses at the street corners, a massive stone post is often seen imbedded in the ground; but to give them a wide berth is impossible, and I looked for business to be brisk at the wheelwright's shop. [Illustration: LEE STREET.] Again, as the street encounters a ledge in its way, one side of it mounts the acclivity, ten, twenty feet above your head, while the other keeps the level as before. Such accidental looking-down upon their neighbors does not, perhaps, argue moral or material pre-eminence; but, for all that, there may be a shilling side. One thing about these old houses impressed me pleasantly; though many of them were guiltless of paint, and on some roofs mosses had begun to creep, and a yellow rust to cover the clapboards, there were few windows that did not boast a goodly show of scarlet geraniums, fuchsias, or mignonnette, with ivy clustering lovingly about the frames, making the dark old casements blossom again, and glow with a wealth of warm color.