The founders seem to have calculated usually upon a population of millions; and upon spots and sporting-grounds, measurable by the olympic coursers, and the ancient fields of combat, when scythes and elephants and chariots made the warriors, and the confused cries of a yelping multitude composed the conflict itself.

There was no want of room, no risk of narrow streets and pavements, no deficiency of area in the formation of public squares.
The houses scattered around the traveller, dotting at long and infrequent intervals the ragged wood which enveloped them, left few stirring apprehensions of their firing one another.

The forest, where the land was not actually built upon, stood up in its primitive simplicity undishonored by the axe.
Such was the condition of the settlement at the period when our hero so unconsciously entered it.

It was night, and the lamps of the village were all in full blaze, illuminating with an effect the most picturesque and attractive the fifty paces immediately encircling them.

Each dwelling boasted of this auxiliary and attraction; and in this particular but few cities afford so abundantly the materials for a blaze as our country villages.