The prospect from the top of Wachusett is the finest that I have seen,—­the elevation being not so great as to snatch the beholder from all sympathy with earth.  The roads that wind along at the foot of the mountain are discernible; and the villages, lying separate and unconscious of one another, each with their little knot of peculiar interests, but all gathered into one category by the observer above them.  White spires, and the white glimmer of hamlets, perhaps a dozen miles off.  The gleam of lakes afar, giving life to the whole landscape.  Much wood, shagging hills and plains.  On the west, a hill-country, swelling like waves, with these villages sometimes discovered among them.  On the east it looks dim and blue, and affects the beholder like the sea, as the eye stretches far away.  On the north (?) appears Monadnock, in his whole person, discernible from the feet upwards, rising boldly and tangibly to the sense, so that you have the figure wholly before you, fair and blue, but not dim and cloudlike.

On the road from Princeton to Fitchburg we passed fields which were entirely covered with the mountain-laurel in full bloom,—­as splendid a spectacle, in its way, as could be imagined.  Princeton is a little town, lying on a high ridge, exposed to all the stirrings of the upper air, and with a prospect of a score of miles round about.  The great family of this place is that of the Boylstons, who own Wachusett, and have a mansion, with good pretensions to architecture, in Princeton.

Notables:  Old Gregory, the dweller of the mountain-side; his high-spirited wife; the son, speaking gruffly from behind the scenes, in answer to his father’s inquiries as to the expediency of lodging us.  The brisk little landlord at Princeton, recently married, intelligent, honest, lively, agreeable; his wife, with her young-ladyish manners still about her; the second class of annuals, and other popular literature, in the parlors of the house; colored engraving of the explosion of the Princeton’s gun, with the principal characters in that scene, designated by name; also Death of Napoleon, &c.  A young Mr. Boylston boarding at the inn, and driving out in a beautiful, city-built phaeton, of exquisite lightness.  We met him and a lady in the phaeton, and two other ladies on horseback, in a narrow path, densely wooded, on the ascent of a hill.  It was quite romantic.  Likewise old Mr. Boylston, frequenting the tavern, coming in after church, and smoking a cigar,... entering into conversation with strangers about the ascent of the mountain.  The tailor of the place, with his queer advertisement pasted on the wall of the barroom, comprising certificates from tailors in New York City, and various recommendations, from clergymen and others, of his moral and religious character.  Two Shakers in the cars,—­both, if I mistake not, with thread gloves on.  The foundation of the old meeting-house of Princeton, standing on a height above the village, as bleak and windy as the top of Mount Ararat; also the old deserted town-house.  The edifices were probably thus located in order to be more exactly in the centre of the township.