BOSTON.

The Wilderness-The Puritans-Early Ways-England's no more-The Siege-Many Nations-The City of Notions-The Literati-The Divisions of the City-The North End-Christ Church-The Battle of Lexington-Faneuil Hall-The Markets-The Hub of Gold-The State House-Beacon Hill-The Clubs-Men of Letters-Louisburg-Boston Common-The Soldiers' Monument-Bits of History-The Public Garden-Floral Splendour-A Group of Statues-The City Hall-The Fire Brigade, Police, Aqueducts-Charities and Corrections-King's Chapel--The Old Cemeteries -Books and Newspapers-The Old South Church-The Old State House-State Street-The Post Office-The Insurance Palaces-The Public Library-The Athenæum-The Antiquaries-The Puritan Vatican-Music-The Great Organ-Theatres-Education-Boston University-Institute of Technology-Wellesley College -The Public SchoolsThe West End-Commonwealth Avenue-The Museum of Fine Arts-Trinity Church-The New Old South Church -The South End-The Secret Societies and the Christian Fraternities-The Unitarians-The Cathedral-Suburban Sketches-The Harbour and Forts-Bunker Hill and its Battle-Soldiers' Monuments-Cambridge and Harvard University-Venerable Houses-Mount Auburn.

OLD STATE HOUSE.

GROUP of steep hills, covered with thickets and rank grasses, on an irregular peninsula, containing hardly a square mile of firm ground, near the estuaries of two broad confluent rivers, and looking out on the sea, peopled, withal, only by birds and wild animals, and occasionally visited by petty clans of Indians such was the site of Boston 260 years ago, when Captain Miles Standish, the gallant Pilgrim soldier, scouting out from New Plymouth, first landed upon its beach. Five years later, and William Blackstone, a mysterious Anglican priest, who sought the seclusion of the wilderness, built a house

and planted an orchard here, and dwelt in solitude among the sea-blown hills of Shawmut. Another space of four years, and Governor Winthrop's colony, rambling down the rugged coast to find a propitious site for a settlement, came hither, attracted by the clear springs and maritime advantages, and founded their new city, on the 17th of September, 1630. The "Tri-mountain," which the locality had borne, was changed to "Boston," in honour of the ancient city of the same name (in earliest times, "Botolph's Town," from the famous Saxon saint who founded it) among the lowlands of Lincolnshire. Rude wooden huts with thatched roofs soon arose between the hills, wherewith to shelter the exiles; and a barn-like edifice was erected for the First Church of Christ.

name

By the Act of 23rd Elizabeth, 1582, it was decreed to be treason to England to worship God in any other way than that prescribed by the Church of England; and this rigorous edict was made still harder by her successors on the throne. Two parties of dissenters arose the Separatists, who believed that Episcopalianism was utterly corrupt, and came off from it; and the Puritans, who lamented the evils in the Church, and hoped to reform it from within. The Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, about thirty miles from Boston, in 1620, were Separatists; the colony which founded Boston was composed of Puritans. The prolonged persecutions conducted by Archbishops Bancroft and Laud at last caused even these children of the Church to despair of her regeneration, and to see in self-exile their only hope of freedom. The more adventurous sought the trackless Western solitudes, in Winthrop's fleet, but enough remained at home to leaven England, and, under Cromwell, to overthrow the tyranny of the Stuarts and their mitre-bearers. Even Hume has admitted that "the precious spark of liberty was kindled and preserved by the Puritans alone, and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution."

So these tough-fibred, resolute, highly-consecrated Englishmen abandoned their homes, and sailed out into the shadowy West, seeking no Ophir nor Cathay, but a tangled northern wilderness, infested by savage and heathen tribes, and brooded over by a harsh and inclement climate, hoping only to be enabled, by unfaltering perseverance and heroic patience, to worship God in peace, and in their own way. It was not a movement in favour of religious toleration, for no one could become a citizen of the new state unless he was a member of the Puritan Church. Under a stern theocratic discipline, the town and colony grew steadily and surely, driving back the Indians farther and farther into the interior; executing sanguinary edicts against the Baptists, Episcopalians, and Quakers, who came among them; and continually endeavouring to secure a greater measure of independence from England. Not only did they trust in God, they also kept their powder dry. The first year's ships brought 1,500 immigrants, and 20,000 came within ten years. In 1639, the train-bands on Boston Common mustered a thousand well-armed men; and a tall mast had already been erected on Beacon Hill, with an iron frame near the top, in which to kindle alarum-fires to arouse the country. A rude castle arose on an island before the town, and war-vessels were commissioned, because at various times the port was menaced with attacks from Dutch, Spanish, and French fleets. Powerful contingents went out from Boston to aid the British expeditions against Louisburg, Quebec, Acadie, and Havana; and the colonials, marching side by side with the best troops in the world, became veteran and skilful soldiers.

Boston.]

THE FIRST SETTLERS.

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One of the earliest colonists wrote back to England that the new country was "a hideous wilderness, possessed by barbarous Indians, very cold, sickly, rocky, barren, unfit for culture, and like to keep the people miserable." In 1663, an English tourist said: "The buildings are handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large streets, most of them paved with pebble; in the High Street, towards the Common, there are fair buildings, some of stone;" and the Kentish exile, Johnson, in his " Wonder-working Providence of Sion's Savior in New England," spoke thus: "The chief edifice of this city-like town is crowded on the sea-banks, and wharfed out with great labour and cost; the buildings beautiful and large, some fairly set forth with brick, stone, tile, and slate, and orderly placed with seemly streets, whose continual enlargement presageth some sumptuous city." The Abbé Robin, coming hither with Rochambeau's French army, said: "The high, regular buildings, intermingled with steeples, seemed to us more like a long-established town of the Continent than a recent colony." Less flattering was the testimony of an earlier London tourist: "Their buildings, like their women, being neat and handsome; and their streets, like the hearts of the male inhabitants, are paved with pebble."

In the days of the royal Governors the houses were quaint to the last degree, halftimbered, like bits from Chester, abounding in pointed gables, and lurching over the narrow footways with long projecting eaves. The affairs of the day were recorded in the Boston News-Letter-the first newspaper in America, established in 1704. Rigid sumptuary laws were enforced; a high official was reprimanded by the Governor for indulging in the luxury of a wainscot in his house; fast riding, ball-playing in the streets, absence from church, speaking ill of the clergy, taking tobacco publicly, charging high prices, denying the Scriptures, a man kissing his wife on Sunday, sheltering Quakers or Baptists-all these were crimes in the sight of the law-makers. At night, the watch patrolled the streets, walking (as their instructions attest) "two by two together, a youth joined with an elder and more sober person. . . If after ten o'clock they see lights, to inquire if there be warrantable cause; and if they hear any noise or disorder, wisely to demand the reason. . . If they find young men and maidens, not of known fidelity, walking after ten o'clock, wisely to demand the cause; and if they appear ill-minded, to watch them narrowly, command them to go to their lodgings, and if they refuse, then to secure them till morning." There were many slaves in the city, some of them negroes, and others Scotsmen captured in Cromwell's Northern wars, and sold over-seas for labourers. At one time there were more than 2,000 black slaves in Boston.

At last the old immigrants died out-the immediate descendants of the first Hegira and a new generation took their places. These men to the manner born knew of England mainly as a harsh mother, an insatiable tax-gatherer, and the source of many ill-chosen and autocratic royal Governors. The popular temper soon began to show itself. In 1689 Sir Edmund Andros was deposed, his fortress taken, and the royal frigate in the harbour stripped of her sails and topmasts. In 1747, when Commodore Knowles impressed a few sailors in the streets, the people rose and seized several British naval officers, holding them until their townsmen were released. Later, there was a continuous outcry for years against the Parliamentary taxes; the port was declared closed; and the British guard on King Street, assailed by a motley mob, dispersed it

by a volley which killed and wounded many citizens. This event is still commemorated as the "Boston Massacre." Three years later, a band of men disguised as Indians boarded the English ships at the piers, and threw their cargoes of tea (taxed by Parliament) into the harbour. In 1775, the royal troops, although numbering 10,000, and supported by a large fleet, were shut up in Boston by an army of American volunteers, who filled the adjacent country with their camps and batteries, and frequently bombarded the town. Before the investment, the expedition to Concord was made, when the troops were hurled back into Boston, with great loss, by the rapidly assembling yeomanry. There was fighting among the islands of the harbour and along the adjacent coasts, and the beleaguered garrison failed to better itself in any way. A daring movement on the part of the insurgents brought about the battle of Bunker Hill, which was won by the king's troops, but at fearful cost. Finally, the American commander seized upon Dorchester Heights, overlooking the town, and strongly fortified their lines, thus rendering Boston untenable. Early in 1776, the royal troops embarked on the fleet, accompanied by many hundreds of loyal Bostonians, and sailed away to Halifax, while the American army marched triumphantly into the half-ruined streets.

At the close of the War of Independence, Boston was the most influential community in America; but now she has fallen behind in the race, and the Republic has at least two cities of greater importance, and four larger in population. It has seen the usual great conflagrations so common to American cities, a few devastating pestilences, a blockade by British frigates, in the war of 1812, and other mischances; but the manufacturing and commercial interests of the six States of New England have grown steadily to vast proportions, and made Boston their natural market and distributingpoint. Of late years this has become the Western port of several lines of British steamships, doing an immense and increasing freight business, and favoured by the depth and security of the harbour and by the marginal railways, which allow luggage-vans to be run directly out upon the docks.

The 1,500 pilgrims of conscience who landed here in the wilderness in 1630 were represented, 140 years later, by 17,000 citizens, of pure and homogeneous Puritan stock. For the last forty years, however, vast floods of emigration and immigration have changed the character of the population. Scores of thousands of citizens, mostly the younger and more enterprising of the descendants of the Puritans, have gone westward, to search for the golden fleece upon the mid-continental prairies, and to build up great cities and states, with New England principles, among and beyond the Rocky Mountains. Sir Charles Dilke found in Australia, New Zealand, and North America a Greater Britain; the ethnologists and statisticians recognise in the vast North-west, stretching from Lake Erie to the Sierras, a Greater New England. In the meantime, a heterogeneous multitude has poured across the Atlantic, and settled in the ancient city. The Irish number full 80,000; the Germans, 9,000; Italy has 1,800 representatives; England, 10,000; Scotland, 3,000; Sweden, 2,000; and almost every other nation in Europe has sent its contributions. There are nearly a thousand who came from the Azores Islands, and still cling to the musical Portuguese language and the pomp of the Latin Church. The last element to enter is composed of the yellow and moon-faced Chinese, 200 of

Boston.]

THE CITY OF NOTIONS.

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whom are now dwelling in the Puritan streets, and carefully retaining their national costumes and habits. The Israel of the wilderness has been overwhelmed by all manner of ecclesiastical Philistines, and has become only a little sect among many other sects. The multitudinous Irish societies, affluent in green banners and badges, are a prominent figure in the civic processions; the German Turners support a theatre of their own; the kilted Caledonians march, with screaming bagpipes, to picnics among the braes and muirs of Plymouth County; the associated Italians honour the memory of Columbus in straggling processions; and the dark Azoreans bear the blue-and-white flag of Portugal over ranks devoted to mutual benefit and charity.

In all the philanthropies and fanaticisms of the century, Boston has led the Republic; and her orators, essayists, and clergy have started popular movements which have been far-reaching in their effects. The Puritan City is the Exeter Hall of America; and the advanced ideas which from time to time agitate the Continent are born here. The discipline of the theocracy is still apparent in scores of thoughtful men and women, intensely narrow, but correspondingly deep and powerful, and each living with a definite and overmastering purpose, to struggle in season and out of season with some real or imaginary colossal evil of civilisation. The presence of these agitators has won for Boston, among her good-natured and imperturbable civic sisters, the name of "The City of Notions." The long and terrible battle against human slavery-as yet not entirely won-was commenced by a handful of these fanatics, and most nobly continued by serried columns of thinking bayonets from New York and Chicago. The Christianity of America has been liberalised (and perhaps sentimentalised) by the Channing and Parker influences; and an anti-Christian theism, active in its propaganda, emanates from the conclaves in Paine Memorial Hall. Spiritualism, too-that strange medley of diabolic supernaturalism and human imposture-is stronger here than in any other city, and has thousands of adherents and a great body of mystic

CHRIST CHURCH.