But we console ourselves. Each season brings its own attractions. In summer one may relish what is new in Oldport, as the liveries, the incomes, the manners. There is often a delicious freshness about these exhibitions; it is a pleasure to see some opulent citizen in his first kid gloves. His new-born splendor stands in such brilliant relief against the confirmed respectability of the "Old Stone Mill," the only thing on the Atlantic shore which has had time to forget its birthday! But in winter the Old Mill gives the tone to the society around it; we then bethink ourselves of the crown upon our Trinity Church steeple, and resolve that the courtesies of a bygone age shall yet linger here. Is there any other place in America where gentlemen still take off their hats to one another on the public promenade? The hat is here what it still is in Southern Europe,--the lineal successor of the sword as the mark of a gentleman. It is noticed that, in going from Oldport to New York or Boston, one is liable to be betrayed by an over-flourish of the hat, as is an Arkansas man by a display of the bowie-knife. Winter also imparts to these spacious estates a dignity that is sometimes wanting in summer. I like to stroll over them during this epoch of desertion, just as once, when I happened to hold the keys of a church, it seemed pleasant to sit, on a week-day, among its empty pews. The silent walls appeared to hold the pure essence of the prayers of a generation, while the routine and the ennui had vanished all away. One may here do the same with fashion as there with devotion, extracting its finer flavors, if such there be, unalloyed by vulgarity or sin. In the winter I can fancy these fine houses tenanted by a true nobility; all the sons are brave, and all the daughters virtuous. These balconies have heard the sighs of passion without selfishness; those cedarn alleys have admitted only vows that were never broken. If the occupant of the house be unknown, even by name, so much the better. And from homes more familiar, what lovely childish faces seem still to gaze from the doorways, what graceful Absences (to borrow a certain poet's phrase) are haunting those windows! There is a sense of winter quiet that makes a stranger soon feel at home in Oldport, while the prospective stir of next summer precludes all feeling of stagnation. Commonly, in quiet places, one suffers from the knowledge that everybody would prefer to be unquiet; but nobody has any such longing here. Doubtless there are aged persons who deplore the good old times when the Oldport mail-bags were larger than those arriving at New York. But if it were so now, what memories would there be to talk about? If you wish for "Syrian peace, immortal leisure,"--a place where no grown person ever walks rapidly along the street, and where few care enough for rain to open an umbrella or walk faster,--come here.