To the westward of the river are the famous "Blue Hills of Southington," the most elevated portion of the State of Connecticut, and nestling under their shadow is Meriden, the hills rising high above its western and northern verge, in the West Peak and Mount Lamentation. Here are gathered over thirty thousand people in an active factory town, the neat wooden dwellings of the operatives forming the nucleus of the city adjacent to the extensive mills, and having as a surrounding galaxy the attractive villas of their owners, scattered in pleasant places upon the steep adjacent hills. They are industrious iron and steel, bronze, brass and tin workers, and the Meriden Britannia and electro-plated silver wares are famous everywhere. The Meriden Britannia Company has enormous mills, and is the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Meriden and Berlin, a short distance northward, have long been the headquarters of the peripatetic Connecticut tin-pedler, who goes forth laden with all kinds of pots and pans, and other bright and useful utensils, to wander over the land, and charm the country folk with his attractive bargains. Berlin began in the eighteenth century the first American manufacture of tinware. There are scores of villages about, cast almost in the same mould. Each has the same beautiful central Public Green, the charm of the New England village, shaded by rows of stately elms; the tall-spired churches; the village graveyard, usually on a gently-sloping hillside, with the lines of older white gravestones, supplemented in the modern interments by more elaborate monuments; the attractive wooden houses nestling amid abundant foliage, and surrounded by gardens and flower-beds, that are the homes of the people, and the huge factories giving them employment. Some of these villages are larger than others, thus covering more space, but excepting in size, all are substantially alike.
The high gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford and the broad fronts of the stately buildings of Trinity College surmounting Rocky Hill, above a labyrinth of factories, are seen rising on the Connecticut River bank to the northward. This is the noted city, with about seventy thousand people, which has reproduced in New England the name in the mother country of the ancient Saxon village just north of London at the "Ford of Harts," whence some of its early settlers came. The brave and pious Thomas Hooker led his flock from the seacoast through the wilderness in 1636 to Hartford, to establish an English colony at the Indian post of Suckiang, the Dutch three years before having built a fort and trading-station at a bend of the Connecticut, where the little Park River flowing in gave a water-power which turned the wheels of a small grist-mill, to which all the country around afterwards brought grain to be ground. Cotton Mather, the quaint historian, described Hooker as "the renowned minister of Hartford and pillar of Connecticut, and the light of the Western churches." Hartford is known as the "Queen City," and its centre is the attractive Bushnell Park, fronting on the narrow and winding Park River. An airy bridge leads from the railway station over this little stream, to the tasteful Park entrance, a triumphal brownstone arch with surmounting conical towers, erected as a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the Civil War. A grand highway then continues up the hill to the Connecticut State Capitol, which cost $2,500,000 to build, one of the finest structures in New England, an imposing Gothic temple of white marble, three hundred feet long, the dome rising two hundred and fifty feet, and all the fronts elaborately ornamented with statuary and artistic decoration. The statue of General Putnam, who died at Hartford in 1790, is in the Park, and his tombstone, battered and weatherworn, is kept as a precious relic in the Capitol. The "Putnam Phalanx" is the great military organization of Hartford. In the east wing of the Capitol is the bronze statue of Nathan Hale, whom the British hanged as a spy in the Revolution. It is a masterpiece, the almost living figure seeming animated with the full vigor of earnest youth, as with outstretched hands he actually appears to speak his memorable words: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." The Connecticut law-makers of to-day who meet in this sumptuous Capitol are milder legislators than their ancestors who made the "blue laws" of the olden time, when the iron rule of the Puritan pastors governing the colony enacted a Draconian code, inflicting death penalties for the crimes of idolatry, unchastity, blasphemy, witchcraft, murder, man-stealing, smiting parents, and some others, with savage punishment for Sabbath-breaking and the use of tobacco.