This is the ordinance of Nature, who, if she scatters her good gifts of talents with a somewhat despotic capriciousness, is well content that men should employ them in republican and equal rivalry. In a little valley bordering upon the Delaware, there stood, fifty years since, a fair dwelling, within an ample domain, which a few years of vicissitude had seen transferred from its founder to a stranger, although wealth and a family of seven sons, the boldest and strongest in the land, might have seemed to insure its possession to them during at least two generations. The vale lies upon the right bank of the river, imbosomed among those swelling hills that skirt the south-eastern foot of the Alleghanies, (using that term in the broad, generic sense given it by geographers,) the principal ridge of which,--the Ka-katch-la-na-min, or Kittatinny, or, as it is commonly called, the Blue Mountain,--is so near at hand, that, upon a clear day, the eye can count the pines bristling over its gray and hazy crags. It stretches, indeed, like some military rampart of the Titans, from the right hand to the left, farther than the eye can reach, broken only by the gaps that, for the most part, give passage to rivers; and but for these, it would be entirely impassable. The original proprietor of the estate was an English emigrant of humble degree, and, at first, of painfully contracted circumstances; but having fallen heir to a considerable property in his own land, and events of a very peculiar nature altering the resolution he had formed to enjoy it within the limits of the chalk-cliffs of Albin, he sat himself down in good earnest to improve the windfall at home. The little farm which he had cultivated with his own hands, was speedily swelled into an extensive manor; and deserting the hovel of logs which had first contented his wants, he built a dwelling-house of stone, so spacious, and of a style of structure so irregular and fantastic, that it had, at a distance, the air rather of a hamlet than a single villa, and indeed looked not unlike a nest of dove-cots stuck together on the hill-side. Without possessing one single feature of architectural elegance, it had yet a romantic appearance, derived in part from the scenery around, from the beauty of the groves and clumps of trees that environed it, and the vines and trailing flowers that were made, in summer at least, to conceal many of its deformities. It was exceedingly sequestered also; for except the log hovel, into which Mr. Gilbert (for that was his name) had inducted a poor widow, befriended out of gratitude for kindness shown him, when their respective conditions were not so unequal, there was not another habitation to be seen from his house, though it commanded an extensive prospect even beyond the river. The highway to the neighbouring Water-Gap, indeed, ran through the estate; the broad river below often echoed to the cries of boatmen and raftsmen,