Farther west, where the ground is now covered with buildings, were two or three redoubts, generally called forts, by which they meant to prevent the landing of the Americans. At that time Beacon Hill was much higher than it is now. Exactly on the point now marked by a monument, a monument was erected after the Revolution, in commemoration of the events of the year when it began. The present monument-completed lately-is an exact imitation of the first, but that this is of stone, and that was of brick. This has the old inscriptions. Washington drove out the English by erecting the strong works on what was then called Dorchester Heights, which we now call South Boston. The places where most of these works existed are marked by inscriptions. Independence Square is on the site of one of them. The careful traveller may go out to Roxbury, follow up Highland Street and turn to the right, and he will find an interesting memorial of one of the strong works built by General Ward. From this point, north and east, each of the towns preserves some relic of In Cambridge one is marked the same kind. by a public square, on which the national flag is generally floating. At the North End of Boston, where is now, and was then, the graveyard of Copp's Hill, the English threw up some batteries. These are now obliterated, but the point is interesting in Revolutionary history, because it was from this height that Gage and Burgoyne saw their men flung back by the withering fire of Bunker Hill. CAMBRIDGE BY SAMUEL A. ELIOT There is no place like it, no, not even for taxes." 'HE early history of New England seems THE to many minds dry and unromantic. No mist of distance softens the harsh outlines, no mirage of tradition lifts events or characters into picturesque beauty, and there seems a poverty of sentiment. The transplanting of a people breaks the successions and associations of history. No memories of Crusader and Conqueror stir the imagination. Instead of the glitter of chivalry we have but the sombre homespun of Puritan peasants. Instead of the castles and cathedrals on which time has laid a hand of benediction we have but the rude log meeting-house and schoolhouse. Instead of Christmas merriment the voice of our past brings to us only the noise of axe and hammer, or the dreary droning of Psalms. It seems bleak, and destitute of poetic inspiration; at once plebeian and prosaic. But I cannot help feeling that if we look beneath the uncouth exterior we shall find in New England history much idealism, much that can inspire noble daring and feed the springs of romance. Out of the hard soil of the Puritan thought, out of the sterile rocks of the New England conscience, spring flowers of poetry. This story of the planting of Cambridge has if I might linger on it a wealth of dramatic interest, not indeed in its antiquity, -it is but a story of yesterday, but in the human associations that belong to it and the patriotic memories it stirs. The Cambridge dust is eloquent of the long procession of saints and sages, scholars and poets, whose works and words have made the renown of the place. First the Puritan chiefs of Massachusetts; then the early scholars of the budding commonwealth; then the Tory gentry who made the town in the days before the Revolution the centre of a lavish hospitality, and who maintained a happy social life of which the memories still linger in the beautiful homes which they left behind them; then the patriot |