BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS.
The month of April, 1876, found myself and horse fully equipped and
ready to leave Boston, but I will not ride away from the metropolis of
New England without some reference to its early history and remarkable
development, nor without telling the reader of my lecture at Tremont
Temple and other contemplated lectures in the leading cities and towns
along my route.
Boston, standing on her three hills with the torch of learning in her
hand for the illumination of North, South, East and West, is not one of
your ordinary every-day cities, to be approached without due
introduction. Like some ancient dame of historic lineage, her truest
hospitality and friendliest face are for those who know her story and
properly appreciate her greatness, past and present. Before visiting
her, therefore, I recalled to memory those facts which touch us no more
nearly than a dream on the pages of written history, but when studied
from the living models and relics gain much life, color and
verisimilitude.
Boston Harbor, with its waters lying in azure placidity over the buried
boxes of tea which the hasty hands of the angered patriots hurled to a
watery grave; Boston Common, whose turf grows velvet-green over ground
once blackened by the fires of the grim colonial days of witch-burning,
and again trampled down by innumerable soldierly feet in Revolutionary
times; the Old State House, from whose east window the governor's
haughty command, "Disperse, ye rebels!" sounded on the occasion of the
"Boston Massacre," the first shedding of American blood by the British
military; and the monument of Bunker Hill--these, with a thousand and
one other reminders of the city's brilliant historical record, compose
the Old Boston which I was prepared to see. The first vision, however,
of that many-sided city was almost bewilderingly different from the
mental picture. Where was the quaint Puritan town of the colonial
romances? Where were its crooked, winding streets, its plain
uncompromising meeting-houses, darkened with time, its curious gabled
houses, stooping with age? Around me everything was shining with
newness--the smooth wide streets, beautifully paved, the splendid
examples of _fin de siecle_ architecture in churches, public buildings,
school houses and dwellings.
Afterwards I realized that there was a New Boston, risen Phoenix-like
from the ashes of its many conflagrations, and an Old Boston, whose
"outward and visible signs" are best studied in that picturesque, shabby
stronghold of ancient story, now rapidly degenerating into a "slum"
district--the North End.
Boston, viewed without regard to its history, is indeed "Hamlet
presented without the part of Hamlet." It would be interesting to
conjecture what the city's present place and condition might be, had
Governor Winthrop's and Deputy-Governor Dudley's plan of making
"New-towne"--the Cambridge of to-day--the Bay Colony's principal
settlement, been executed. Instead, and fortunately, Governor Winthrop
became convinced of the superiority of Boston as an embryo "county
seat." "Trimountain," as it was first called, was bought in 1630 from
Rev. William Blackstone, who dwelt somewhere between the Charles River
and what is now Louisburg Square, and held the proprietary right of the
entire Boston Peninsula--a sort of American Selkirk, "monarch of all he
surveyed, and whose right there was none to dispute." He was "bought
off," however, for the modest sum of _L_30, and retired to what was then
the wilderness, on the banks of the Blackstone River--named after
him--and left "Trimountain" to the settlers. Then Boston began to grow,
almost with the quickness of Jack's fabled beanstalk. Always one of the
most important of colonial towns, it conducted itself in sturdy Puritan
style, fearing God, honoring the King--with reservations--burning
witches and Quakers, waxing prosperous on codfish, and placing education
above every earthly thing in value, until the exciting events of the
Revolution, which has left behind it relics which make Boston a
veritable "old curiosity shop" for the antiquarian, or indeed the
ordinary loyal American, who can spend a happy day, or week, or month,
prowling around the picturesque narrow streets, crooked as the
proverbial ram's horn, of Old Boston.
He will perhaps turn first, as I did, to the "cradle of
Liberty"--Faneuil Hall. A slight shock will await him, possibly, in the
discovery that under the ancient structure, round which hover so many
imperishable memories of America's early struggles for freedom, is a
market-house, where thrifty housewives and still more thrifty farmers
chaffer, chat and drive bargains the year round, and which brings into
the city a comfortable annual income of $20,000. But the presence of the
money-changers in the temple of Freedom does not disturb the "solid men
of Boston," who are practical as well as public-spirited. The market
itself is as old as the hall, which was erected by the city in 1762, to
take the place of the old market-house, which Peter Faneuil had built at
his own expense and presented to the city in 1742, and which was burned
down in 1761.
The building is an unpretending but substantial structure, plainly
showing its age both in the exterior and the interior. Its
size--seventy-four feet long by seventy-five feet wide--is apparently
increased by the lack of seats on the main floor and even in the
gallery, where only a few of these indispensable adjuncts to the comfort
of a later luxurious generation are provided. The hall is granted rent
free for such public or political meetings as the city authorities may
approve, and probably is only used for gatherings where, as in the old
days, the participants bring with them such an excess of effervescent
enthusiasm as would make them unwilling to keep their seats if they had
any. The walls are embellished by portraits of Hancock, Washington,
Adams, Everett, Lincoln, and other great personages, and by Healy's
immense painting--sixteen by thirty feet--of "Webster Replying to
Hayne."
For a short time Faneuil Hall was occupied by the Boston Post Office,
while that institution, whose early days were somewhat restless ones,
was seeking a more permanent home. For thirty years after the
Revolution, it was moved about from pillar to post, occupying at one
time a building on the site of Boston's first meeting-house, and at
another the Merchants' Exchange Building, whence it was driven by the
great fire of 1872. Faneuil Hall was next selected as the temporary
headquarters, next the Old South Church, after which the Post Office--a
veritable Wandering Jew among Boston public institutions--was finally
and suitably housed under its own roof-tree, the present fine building
on Post Office Square.
[Illustration: VIEWS IN BOSTON.]
To the Old South Church itself, the sightseer next turns, if still bent
on historical pilgrimages. This venerable building of unadorned brick,
whose name figures so prominently in Revolutionary annals, stands at the
corner of Washington and Milk streets. Rows of business structures, some
of them new and clean as a whistle and almost impertinently eloquent of
the importance of this world and its goods, cluster around the old
church and hem it in, but are unable to jostle it out of the quiet
dignity with which it holds its place, its heavenward-pointing spire
preaching the sermons against worldliness which are no longer heard
within its ancient walls. To every window the fanciful mind can summon a
ghost--that of Benjamin Franklin, who was baptized and attended service
here; Whitfield, who here delivered some of the soul-searching,
soul-reaching sermons, which swept America like a Pentecostal flame;
Warren, who here uttered his famous words on the anniversary of the
Boston Massacre; of the patriot-orators of the Revolution and the
organizers of the Boston Tea-Party, which first took place as a definite
scheme within these walls. Here and there a red-coated figure would be
faintly outlined--one of the lawless troop of British soldiers who in
1775 desecrated the church by using it as a riding-school.
At present the church is used as a museum, where antique curiosities and
historical relics are on exhibition to the public, and the Old South
Preservation Committee is making strenuous efforts to save the building
from the iconoclastic hand of Progress, which has dealt blows in so many
directions in Boston, destroying a large number of interesting
landmarks. Its congregation left it long ago, in obedience to that
inexorable law of change and removal, which leaves so many old churches
stranded amid the business sections of so many of our prominent cities,
and settled in the "New Old South Church" at Dartmouth and Boylston
streets.
It is curious and in its way disappointing to us visitors from other
cities to see what "a clean sweep" the broom of improvement has been
permitted in a city so intensely and justly proud of its historical
associations as Boston. Year by year the old landmarks disappear and
fine new buildings rise in their places and Boston is apparently
satisfied that all is for the best. The historic Beacon, for which
Beacon Hill was named and which was erected in 1634 to give alarm to the
country round about in case of invasion, is not only gone, but the very
mound where it stood has been levelled, this step having been taken in
1811. The Beacon had disappeared ten years before and a shaft sixty
feet high, dedicated to the fallen heroes of Bunker Hill, had been
erected on the spot and of course removed when the mound was levelled.
The site of Washington's old lodgings at Court and Hanover street--a
fine colonial mansion, later occupied by Daniel Webster and by Harrison
Gray Otis, the celebrated lawyer--is now taken up by an immense
wholesale and retail grocery store; the splendid Hancock mansion, where
the Revolutionary patriot entertained Lafayette, D'Estaing, and many
other notabilities of the day, was torn down in 1863, despite the
protests of antiquarian enthusiasts. The double house, in one part of
which Lafayette lived in 1825, is still standing; the other half of it
was occupied during his lifetime by a distinguished member of that
unsurpassed group of _literati_ who helped win for Boston so much of her
intellectual pre-eminence--George Ticknor, the Spanish historian, the
friend of Holmes, Lowell, Whittier and Longfellow, from whom the latter
is supposed to have drawn his portrait of the "Historian" in his "Tales
of a Wayside Inn." The Boston Public Library, that magnificent
institution, which has done so much to spread "sweetness and light," to
use Matthew Arnolds' celebrated definition of culture, among the people
of the "Hub," counts Mr. Ticknor among the most generous of its
benefactors.
One interesting spot for the historical pilgrim is the oldest inn in
Boston, the "Hancock House," near Faneuil Hall, which sheltered
Talleyrand and Louis Philippe during the French reign of terror.
In addition to the fever for improvement, Boston owes the loss of many
of her time-hallowed buildings to a more disastrous agency--that of the
conflagrations which have visited her with strange frequency. A fire in
1811, which swept away the little house on Milk street where Franklin
was born--and which is now occupied by the Boston _Post_--another in
1874, in which more than one hundred buildings were destroyed; and the
"Great Boston Fire" of 1872, followed by conflagrations in 1873, 1874,
1877 and 1878, seemed to indicate that the fire fiend had selected
Boston as his especial prey. To the terrible fire of 1872 many precious
lives, property valued at eighty millions of dollars, and the entire
section of the city enclosed by Summer, Washington, Milk and Broad
streets were sacrificed. The scene was one a witness never could forget.
Mingled with the alarum of the fire-bells and the screams and shouts of
a fear-stricken people came the sound of terrific explosions, those of
the buildings which were blown up in the hope of thus "starving out" the
fire by making gaps which it could not overstep, and to still further
complete the desolation, the gas was shut off, leaving the city in a
horror of darkness; but the flames swept on like a pursuing Fury,
wrapping the doomed city still closer in her embrace of death, and who
was not satisfied until she had left the business centre of Boston a
charred and blackened ruin.
This same district is to-day, however, the most prosperous and
architecturally prepossessing of the business sections of the city,
practically illustrating another phase of that same spirit of
improvement and civic pride which has overturned so many ancient idols
and to-day threatens others. Indeed, it would be a churlish disposition
which would lament the disappearance of the old edifices, the
straightening of the thoroughfares, the alterations without number which
have taken place, and which have resulted in the Boston of to-day, one
of the most beautiful, prosperous and public-spirited cities in the
world. The intelligence and local loyalty, for which her citizens are
renowned, have been set to work to attain one object--the modest goal of
perfection. Obstacles which some cities might have contentedly accepted
as unavoidable have been swept away; advantages with which other cities
might have been satisfied have been still further extended and improved.
The 783 acres originally purchased by the settlers of Boston from
William Blaxton for L30 has been increased over thirty times, until the
city limits comprise 23,661 acres; this not by magic as it would seem,
but by annexation of adjoining boroughs--Roxbury, Dorchester,
Charlestown, and others--and by reclamation of the seemingly hopeless
marshy land to the north and south of the city. The "Back-Bay" district,
the very centre of Boston's wealth, fashion and refinement, the
handsomest residence quarter in America, is built upon this "made land,"
which it cost the city about $1,750,000 to fill in and otherwise render
solid.
[Illustration: SCENES IN BOSTON.]
All good Bostonians, like the rest of their countrymen, may wish to go
to Paris when they die--that point cannot be settled; but it is certain
that they all wish to go to the Back-Bay while they live. And who can
wonder? To drive at night down Commonwealth avenue, the most
aristocratic street in this aristocratic quarter, is to view a scene
from fairyland. "The Avenue" itself is 250 feet wide from house to
house and 175 feet wide from curb to curb, and in the centre a
picturesque strip of parkland, adorned with statues and bordered with
ornamental trees and shrubs, follows its entire length. On either side
of the street stand palatial hotels and magnificent private residences,
from whose innumerable windows twinkle innumerable lights, which,
mingling with the quadruple row of gas-lamps which look like a winding
ribbon of light, make the vista perfectly dazzling in its beauty. By
day, when the Back Bay Park, the Public Garden, the fine bridge over the
park water-way extension and the handsome surrounding and intersecting
streets can be seen, the view is even more attractive.
In the newer parts of Boston the reproach of crooked streets, which has
given her sister cities opportunity for so much good-natured "chaff," is
removed, and the thoroughfares are laid out with such precision that
"the wayfaring man, though a fool," can hardly "err therein." In the
business district much money has been spent on the straightening
process, a fact whose knowledge prompts the bewildered stranger to
exclaim, "Were they ever worse than this?" Stories aimed at this little
peculiarity of the "Hub" are innumerable, the visitor being told with
perfect gravity that if he follows a street in a straight line he will
find himself at his original starting-point--a statement the writer's
experience can pretty nearly verify. The best, if not the most credible,
of these tales relates how a puzzled pedestrian, becoming "mixed up in
his tracks," endeavored to overtake a man who was walking ahead of him,
and inquire his way. The faster he walked, however, the faster the other
man walked, until it became a regular chase, and the now thoroughly
confused stranger had but one idea--to catch his fellow-pedestrian by
the coat-tails, if need be, and demand to be set on his homeward way.
Finally, by making a frantic forward lurch, he succeeded--and discovered
that the coat-tails he was grasping were his own!
The true Bostonian is secretly rather proud, however, of this
distinguished trait of his beloved city, and is willing to go "all
around Robin Hood's barn" to get to his destination.
But the thing of which the Bostonian is proudest of all is his famous
Common, whose green turf and noble shade-trees have formed a stage and
background for so many of the most exciting scenes of Colonial and
Revolutionary history. Among the troops which have been mustered and
drilled upon it were a portion of the forces which captured Quebec and
Louisburg; and the rehearsals for the grim drama of war, which later was
partly performed on the same ground by red-coat and continental, took
place here. It was at the Common's foot that the hated "lobster-backs"
assembled before embarking for Lexington; on the Common that they
marshalled their forces for the conflict at Bunker Hill. It has been
covered with white tents during the British occupation of Boston; dotted
with earthworks behind which the enemy crouched, expecting an attack by
Washington upon their stronghold. It was on Boston Common that the
school-boys constructed their snowmen, whose destruction by the insolent
red-coats sent an indignant deputation of young Bostonians to complain
to General Gage, who, stunned by what the young Bostonian of to-day
would designate as "the cheek of the thing," promised them redress, and
exclaimed, "These boys seem to take in the love of liberty with the very
air they breathe."
There are other interesting historical incidents, recorded in connection
with the Common, but space forbids their narration. I would rather
describe it as it first appeared to me, a beautiful surprise, a gracious
spot of greenness and of silvery waters and splendid shade-trees, in the
heart of the busy brick-bound city. Here the children play and coast, as
they did in the days of General Gage; here the lovers walk, on the five
beautiful broad pathways, the Tremont street, Park street, Beacon
street, Charles street and Boylston street malls. Here the invalids and
old folks rest on the numerous benches; here the people congregate on
summer evenings to enjoy the free open-air concerts, which are given
from the band-stand. "Frog Pond," a pretty lakelet, near Flagstaff Hill,
and a fine deer-park in the vicinity of the Boylston street mall, are
great attractions. The Common covers forty-eight acres, with 1000
stately old shade-trees, and the iron fence by which it is inclosed
measures 5932 feet.
In addition to its natural beauties, the Common has two fine pieces of
statuary, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Flagstaff Hill, and the
Brener Fountain. The former was erected in 1871 at a cost of $75,000. It
is a majestic granite shaft in the Roman-Doric style, seventy feet high,
surmounted by a bronze figure of the Genius of America, eleven feet in
height. At the base of the shaft are grouped alto-relievo figures
representing the North, the South, the East, and the West. Four other
bronze figures, representing Peace, History, the Army and the Navy,
stand on projecting pedestals around the foundation. The monument, which
was executed by Martin Milmore, was Boston's tribute to her fallen
heroes of the Civil War. The Brener Fountain is a beautiful bronze
casting designed by Lienard, of Paris, with bronze figures representing
Neptune, Amphitrite, Acis, and Galatea grouped round the base. The late
Gardner Brener presented it to the city in 1868.
To forget the Old Elm in describing the Common, would be rank disrespect
to that hoary "oldest inhabitant," albeit nothing remains of it now but
its memory. An iron fence surrounds the spot where once it stood, and a
vigorous young sapling has providentially sprung up in its place, as a
successor. The Old Elm was ancient in 1630, when the town was settled,
and was one of its most interesting landmarks up to 1876, when it was
blown down.
The Public Garden, from which the beautiful Commonwealth avenue begins,
the Back-Bay Park, which cost a million of dollars, and the Arnold
Arboretum, where Harvard University has planted and maintained a fine
horticultural collection for the pleasure of the public, are lovely
spots on whose beauty the mind would fain linger, but whose descriptions
must be omitted, for all Boston's splendid public buildings wait in
stately array their share of attention. Nowhere has the skilled
artist-architect been so freely permitted to carry out his designs
unhampered by stupidity and stinginess as in Boston, and the result has
been a collection of public buildings unsurpassed by those of any modern
city. The Boston State House comes first, of course--did not the
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" term it, with loving exaggeration, the
"Hub of the Solar System?" From Beacon Hill, the most prominent coign
of vantage which could be selected for it, its gilded dome rises
majestically against the blue sky and imperiously beckons the visitor to
come and pay his respects to this most venerated of Boston institutions.
The State House stands, at a height of 110 feet, at the junction of
Beacon and Mt. Vernon streets and Hancock avenue, on a lot which
Governor Hancock once used for pasturing his cows, and was erected in
1795, beginning its existence in a blaze of glory, with the corner-stone
laid by Paul Revere, then Grand Master of the Masons, and an oration by
Samuel Adams. The building contains Doric Hall, which is approached by a
fine series of stone terraces from Beacon street; Hall of
Representatives, the Senate Chamber, the Government Room, and the State
Library.
It abounds in relics, among which are the tattered shreds of flags
brought back by Massachusetts soldiers from Southern battle-fields--a
sight which must stir every loyal heart, to whatsoever State it owes
allegiance; the guns carried by the Concord minute-men in the
Revolutionary conflict; and duplicates of the gift to the State by
Charles Sumner, of the memorial tablets of the Washington family in
England. Doric Hall contains busts of Sumner, Adams, Lincoln, and other
great men, and several fine statues--one of Washington, by Chantrey, and
one by Thomas Ball; a speaking likeness in marble of John A. Andrew, the
indomitable old War Governor of Massachusetts.
On the handsome terraces in front of the building stand two superb
bronzes, one is the Horace Mann statue, by Emma Stebbins, which was
erected in 1865, and paid for by contributions from teachers and school
children all over Massachusetts; the other Hiram Powers' statue of
Daniel Webster, which cost $10,000. It was erected in 1859, and was the
second statue of Webster which the famous sculptor wrought, the first,
the product of so much toil and pains and the embodiment of so much
genius, having been lost at sea.
Last, but very far from least in importance, may be mentioned the
historic codfish, which hangs from the ceiling of Assembly Hall,
dangling before the eyes of the legislators in perpetual reminder of the
source of Massachusetts' present greatness, for the codfish might by a
stretch of Hibernian rhetoric be described as the patron saint of the
Bay State.
I must confess to having been one of the 50,000 curious ones who, it is
computed, annually ascend into the gilded cupola and "view the landscape
o'er." The spectacle unrolled panorama-like before the sight is indeed a
feast to the eyes.
The Old State House of 1748, built on the site of Boston's earliest town
hall, is now used as a historical museum under the auspices of the
Bostonian Society. Careful restoration has perpetuated many of the old
associations which hallow the ancient fane, sacred to loyalty and to
liberty. The old council-chambers have been given much of their original
appearance, and the great carving of the Lion and the Unicorn, which
savored of offence to patriotic nostrils and so was taken down from its
gables in Revolutionary times, has been replaced. To visit this building
is a liberal education in local history.
The Boston Post Office, of whose migrations I have spoken earlier, is
now settled for good and all in a magnificent structure of Cape Ann
granite, built in Renaissance style, whose corner-stone was laid in
1871 and which was just ready for the addition of the roof when the
Great Fire of 1872 descended upon it and beat upon it so fiercely that
even to-day the traces of the intense heat are visible on parts of the
edifice. Damage to the amount of $175,000 was done. The Sub-Treasury,
the United States courts, the pension and internal revenue offices are
domiciled here, and it is considered the handsomest public building in
all New England, having cost $6,000,000. The interior furnishings are
sumptuous in the extreme, the doors and windows in the Sub-Treasury
apartments being of solid mahogany, beautifully polished. The "marble
cash-room" is a splendid hall, decorated in Greek style, with
wall-slabbing of dark and light shades of Sienna marble and graceful
pilasters of Sicilian marble.
The City Hall, on School street, is the seat of the municipal
housekeeping. Here the departments of streets, water, lighting, police,
and public printing have their offices, and Common Council sits in
august assemblage. It is a commanding structure of granite, fireproof,
and in the Renaissance style. Its cost was $500,000. Two fine bronze
statues, one by Greenough, of Franklin, one by Ball, of Josiah Quincy,
ornament the grassy square in front of the building.
No picture of Boston would be complete without that old landmark,
Tremont Temple. It occupies the former site of the Tremont Theatre and
contains one of the largest halls in the city. The building itself,
however, sinks into insignificance before the crowd of associations that
stir the blood at its very name. For years it has been the rallying
point of Boston's most notable gatherings--political, intellectual, and
religious. If, instead of colorless words, we could photograph upon
this page the pictures those old walls have looked upon, we might revel
in a gallery of famous portraits such as the world has rarely seen.
Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Joseph Cook,
Phillips Brooks, and other master-spirits of the age, would be there.
And there, too, would be a sprinkling of that other sex, no longer
handicapped by the epithet "gentler."
But, could we press the phonograph as well as the camera into our
service, and hear again the thunders of stormy oratory, the clash of
political warfare, and the pleading tenderness of religious eloquence
that has often resounded under that old roof, then indeed we might well
forget the world of to-day in the fascination of this drama of the past.
Architecturally, Boston combines in the happiest way all that is
beautiful and dignified in the classic models and all that is fresh and
original in modern canons of building. A magnificent group of buildings,
in the vicinity of Boylston and Huntingdon streets and Copley Square,
fairly takes the breath away with its beauty. Trinity Church and the
Museum of Fine Arts, the "New Old South Church" and the new Boston
Public Library, form such a quartet of splendid edifices as even the
travelled eye seldom sees. The Public Library is an embodied
Triumph--the symbol of that great heritage of culture which the city
pours out on her denizens as lavishly and as freely as water, and which,
like "the gentle dew from heaven, blesseth him that gives and him that
takes," returning to enrich the community with its diffused presence,
like the showers which return to the bosom of the river, the moisture
the sun only borrowed for a space. Bostonians have always been proud of
their Public Library, from its foundation in 1852. By 1885, the Boylston
street building, with accommodations for 250,000 volumes, was too
contracted a space to hold the largest public library in the world, and
with characteristic promptness the city rose to the occasion and embodied
its thought that "nothing can be too good for the people" in the beautiful
new library in Copley Square, which cost the royal sum of $2,600,000.
[Illustration: BOSTON AND ENVIRONS.]
The long chapter of description which this splendid enterprise merits
must be reluctantly crowded into a few lines. Nothing, however, save
personal observation, can give an adequate perception of its outward
loveliness; its exterior of soft cream-gray granite, with a succession
of noble arched windows ranged along its fine facades; its arches,
pillars and floorings of rare marbles, and its mosaics, panels and
carvings. The grand staircase of splendid Sienna marble, opposite the
main entrance, is one of the finest in the world; and scholar or
philosopher could ask no more attractive spot for thoughtful promenade
than the beautiful open court, with its marble basin and MacMonnies
fountain in the centre, the soft green of its surrounding turf affording
grateful rest to book-wearied eyes, and the pensive beauty of the
cloister-like colonnade forming an ideal retreat.
The foremost artists of the world are represented in the interior
decoration. The famous St. Gaudens seal, designed by Kenyon Cox and
executed by Augustus St. Gaudens, ornaments the central arch of the main
vestibule; the bronze doors are by Daniel G. French; the splendid marble
lions in the staircase hall--erected as memorials to their martyred
comrades by two regiments of Massachusetts volunteers--are by Louis St.
Gaudens; and Puvis de Chavannes, James McNeil Whistler, Edwin A. Abbey
and John S. Sargent are among the celebrated artists who have
contributed to the mural decorations, friezes and ceiling frescoes.
Six hundred and fifty thousand volumes at present constitute the stock
of the library--a vast treasure-house of information, instruction and
pleasure to which any citizen of Boston can have access by simply
registering his name, and which among other valuable special collections
includes the Brown musical library of 12,000 volumes and rare autograph
manuscripts; the Barton Shaksperian library, one of the finest
collections of Shakesperiana extant, valued at $250,000; the Bowditch
mathematical library and the splendid Chamberlain collection of
autographs, which is worth $60,000 and represents a lifetime of work on
the part of the donor. The wonderful pneumatic and electric system of
tubes and railways which connects the delivery and stackrooms and keeps
this vast collection of books, pamphlets and magazines in circulation,
smacks almost of the conjurer's craft. Whatever else must be crowded out
of a visit to Boston, the Public Library assuredly should not be passed
by.
Trinity Church stands within hailing distance of the Public Library, on
Boylston and Clarendon streets--an imposing and beautiful edifice of
granite and freestone, built in French Romanesque style, with a tower
211 feet high. Far outside of Boston has the fame of Trinity Church
penetrated, owing not to the fact that it is one of the most splendid,
costly and fashionable churches in the country, but to its ever-revered
and ever-mourned rector, the late Phillips Brooks, Bishop of
Massachusetts, whose massive figure will stand out against the horizon
for many a year as the most striking speaker and deeply spiritual
thinker America has ever known.
From Copley Square, not far from Trinity, rise the spires of the "New
Old South" Church, a superb structure in North Italian Gothic style,
rich in beautiful stone-work, carvings and stained glass. It was erected
at a cost of over half a million of dollars to take the place of the
disused "Old South" on Washington street. Another prominent church is
the First Church, at Marlborough and Berkeley streets, the lineal
descendant of the humble little mud-walled meeting-house which was the
first consecrated roof under which the good folk of Boston gathered for
divine worship. The congregation of that day could scarce believe their
sober Puritan eyes could they behold the $325,000 church which was built
in 1868 to continue the succession which had begun with the little mud
meeting-house of 1632.
King's Chapel, with its ancient burying-ground, is one of the most
famous churches in Boston, having been the chapel of the royal governor,
officers of the army and navy, and other official representatives of the
"principalities and powers" of the mother country. Massive, almost
sombre, in its exterior, and quaint and picturesque within, the old
church stands, with few changes, as erected in 1749, with its
old-fashioned pulpit and sounding-board, prim, straight pillars, and
antique high-backed pews which recall the remark of the little girl,
that when she went to church she "went into a cupboard and climbed up on
the shelf." Its burying-ground is believed to be the oldest in the city.
Christ Church, built in 1723, is the oldest church edifice in the city.
Its age-mellowed chime of bells was the first ever brought into this
country, and the first American Sunday-school was established there in
1816. To-day its tall steeple, which on the eve of Lexington's conflict
bore the signal lanterns of Paul Revere, is the most conspicuous object
in the North End, where the old-time aristocrats who worshipped in
Christ Church have given place to a poverty-stricken foreign population
to whom the church is little and its traditions less. Churches which
well deserve more extended mention, could space permit, are the
beautiful Gothic Cathedral of the Holy Cross, with its fine organ and
splendid high-altar of onyx and marble; Tremont Temple, whose hall is
the largest in Boston; and the South Congregational Church, presided
over by Rev. Edward Everett Hale, author of "The Man without a Country"
and other world-famous literary productions, and originator of the
equally famous "Ten Times One" clubs.
Boston's religious history is most interesting, although almost
kaleidoscopic in its changes. From being the stronghold of Puritan
orthodoxy it has become the headquarters of liberal Unitarianism. King's
Chapel is a curious instance; originally an Episcopal church and
congregation, it became Unitarian in 1787, retaining the Episcopal
liturgy with necessary changes, and now doctrines are preached over the
tombs of the dead dignitaries interred beneath the church floor,
diametrically opposed to those in which they lived, died and were
buried. Though all denominations of course flourish within her walls,
Boston is still strongly Congregational in her leanings.
From the churches to the schools is a natural transition. The founders
of Boston's greatness placed the two influences side by side in
importance, and their wisdom in doing so has had its justification. The
current "poking of fun" at the "Boston school-ma'am," her glasses, her
learning and her devotion to Browning; and the Boston infant, who
converses in polysyllables almost from his birth, has its foundation in
the fact, everywhere admitted, that nowhere are intelligence and culture
so widely diffused in all ranks of life as in Boston. The free-school
system, an experiment which she was the first American city to
inaugurate, is considered by educators to lead the world. The city's
annual expenditures for her public schools, of which there are over 500,
amount to about $2,000,000, and from the kindergarten to the High
School, where the pupils can be prepared for college, the youth of the
city are carefully watched, trained, instructed, and all that is best in
them drawn out. Even in summer, "vacation schools" are held, where the
children who would otherwise be running wild in the streets can learn
sewing, box-making, cooking and other useful branches.
The English High and Latin School is the largest free public school
building in the world, being 423 feet long by 220 feet wide. It is a
fine structure in Renaissance style, with every advantage and
improvement looking to health and convenience that even the progressive
Boston mind could think of. It would be a sluggish soul indeed that
would not be thrilled by the sight of the entire school-battalion going
through its exercises in the immense drill-room, and realize the hopeful
future for this vast army of coming citizens, who are thus early and
thus admirably taught the priceless lesson of discipline.
The Boston Normal School, the Girls' High School and the Public Latin
School for girls, fully cover the demand for the higher education of
women. The latter institution is the fruit of the efforts of the Society
for the University Education of Women, and its graduates enter the
female colleges with ease. Wellesley, the "College Beautiful," as its
students have fondly christened it, is situated close to Boston in the
beautiful village of Wellesley, where feminine education is conducted
almost on ideal lines. No woman's college in the world has so many
students, or so beautiful a home in which to shelter the fair heads,
inwardly crammed and running over with knowledge, and outwardly adorned,
either in fact or in prospective, with the scholastic cap of learning.
Since its opening in 1875, Wellesley has almost created a new era in
woman's education, and its curriculum is the same as those of the most
advanced male colleges. The College Aid Society, which at an annual cost
of from $6000 to $7000 helps ambitious girlhood, for whom straitened
means would otherwise render a university education impossible, is an
interesting feature of the college.
[Illustration: COMMONWEALTH AVENUE, BOSTON.]
What Wellesley has for twenty years been to American girlhood, Harvard
University has for 150 years been to American young manhood, and though
its chief departments are located at Cambridge, it may still be fairly
ranked with Bostonian institutions. The tie which connects the Cambridge
University and the capital of Massachusetts is closer than that existing
between mere neighbors--it is a veritable bond of kinship. It might
be said that from the opening of the University in 1638, Boston made
Harvard and Harvard Boston. Its illustrious founder, John Harvard, was a
resident of Charlestown, now a part of Boston--and his monument, erected
by subscriptions of Harvard graduates, is one of the principal "sights"
of that district, where it stands near the Old State Prison. To its
classic groves Boston has sent, and from them received again, the
noblest of her sons; and three of her departments, the Bussey
Institution of Agriculture, the Medical School and the Dental School,
are situated within the limits of Boston proper. Harvard University at
present owns property valued at $6,000,000, and accommodates nearly 2000
pupils. In addition to the departments already mentioned and which are
located in Boston, the principal sections are Harvard College, the
Jefferson Laboratory, the Lawrence Scientific School, the new Law
School, the Divinity School, the Harvard Library, Botanical Gardens,
Observatory, Museum of Comparative Zooelogy, Peabody Museum of Archaeology
and Ethnology, Agassiz Museum, Hemenway Gymnasium and Memorial Hall. To
wander through its ancient halls, the oldest of which dates back to
1720, and which have been used by Congress, is to visit the cradle of
university education in America.
Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the
best scientific colleges on the continent, Tufts College and the
celebrated Chauncy Hall School, are among the finest of Boston's many
admirable educational institutions.
Mention has been made of the Harvard Monument, but not of the others
among the scores of fine examples of the sculptor's art which are
scattered throughout the city in generous profusion for the delight and
the education of the public eye. The famous Bunker Hill Monument was
naturally one of the first objects sought out by the writer on the
occasion of his first visit to Boston. This splendid shaft of granite
was dedicated to the fallen patriots of Bunker Hill in 1841, the
corner-stone having been laid in 1825 by General Lafayette--Daniel
Webster delivering the orations on both occasions. Its site, on Monument
Square, Breed's Hill, is the spot where the Americans threw up the
redoubt on the night before the memorable battle, and a tablet at its
foot marks the place where the illustrious Warren fell.
The monument is 221-1/6 feet high--a fact fully realized only by
climbing the 259 steps of the spiral staircase of stone in the interior
of the shaft which leads to a small chamber near the apex, from which
four windows look out upon the surrounding country--a superb vista. The
cost of this monument was $150,000.
In the Public Gardens, in the Back Bay district, across from
Commonwealth avenue, may be seen one of the largest pieces of statuary
in America, and, according to some connoisseurs, the handsomest in
Boston. This is Ball's huge statue of Washington, which measures
twenty-two feet in height. The statue was unveiled in 1869, and it is
said that not a stroke of work was laid upon it by any hand of artisan
or artist outside of Massachusetts. The Beacon street side of the Public
Gardens contains another famous statue--that of Edward Everett, by W. W.
Story. Other great citizens whose memory has been perpetuated in
life-like marble are Samuel Adams, William Lloyd Garrison and Colonel
William Prescott. The Emancipation Group is a duplicate of the
"Freedman's Memorial" statue in Washington. The soldiers' monuments in
Dorchester, Charlestown, Roxbury, West Roxbury and Brighton commemorate
the unnamed, uncounted, but not unhonored dead who laid down their lives
on the battlefields of the Civil War.
"The bravely dumb who did their deed,
And scorned to blot it with a name;
Men of the plain, heroic breed,
Who loved Heaven's silence more than fame."
An interesting object is the Ether Monument on the Arlington street side
of the Public Gardens erected in recognition of the fact that it was in
the Massachusetts General Hospital--in the face of terrible opposition
and coldness and discouragement, as history tells us, though the marble
does not--that Dr. Sims first gave the world his wonderful discovery of
the power of ether to cause insensibility to pain.
That there should be so many of these fine pieces in Boston's parks and
public places is matter for congratulation but scarcely for surprise. As
a patron of music, literature, art and all the external graces of
civilization she has so long and so easily held her supremacy that one
is half inclined to believe that at least a delegation of the Muses, if
not the whole sisterhood, had exchanged the lonely and unappreciated
grandeur of Parnassus for a seat on one of Boston's three hills. The
Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest musical society in the United
States; the Harvard Musical Association; the famous Boston Symphony
Orchestra and the Orpheus Club, speak--and right musically--of Boston's
love for the art of which Cecilia was patron saint. Music Hall, an
immense edifice near Tremont street, is the home of music in Boston.
Here the symphony concerts are held weekly, and here all the musical
"stars" whose orbit includes Boston make their first appearance before a
critical "Hub" audience. Its great organ, with over 5,000 pipes, is one
of the largest ever made.
The idea of a national university of music--sneered at and scouted when
a few enthusiasts first talked and dreamed of it--took shape in 1867 in
the now famous New England Conservatory of Music, founded by Eben
Tourjee. It is a magnificent school in a magnificent home--the old St.
James' Hotel on Franklin Square--with a hundred teachers from the very
foremost rank of their profession. The conservatory has possibly done
more for New England culture than any other influence save Harvard
University.
The literary life of Boston needs neither chronicler nor comment. Such
men as Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Francis Parkman,
Prescott, the historian, Longfellow, Lowell and countless others who,
living, have made the city their home, or, dead, sleep in its chambers
of Peace, have cast a glamour of books and bookmen and book-life around
her until her title of "The Athens of America" has passed from jest to
earnest. The earliest newspaper in America was the Boston _News Letter_;
and to-day its many newspapers maintain the highest standard of
"up-to-date" journalism in the dignified, not the degrading sense of the
word. Boston is indeed a "bookworm's paradise," with its splendid free
lending library and low-priced book-stores, making access to the best
authors possible to the poorest. The _Atlantic Monthly_, which for so
many years has occupied a place unique and unapproachable among American
magazines, is published here.
Art is represented by the magnificent Museum of Fine Arts, with its
beautiful exterior and interior decorations and fine collection of
antiques and art objects; the Art Club, the Sketch and the Paint and
Clay clubs, as well as by the innumerable paintings and statues
appearing in public places; by the Athenaeum, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the Boston Society of Natural History, the Warren
Museum and the Lowell Institute free lectures.
To draw this brief study of Boston to a close without mentioning her
countless charities would be a grave omission, since these form so large
a part of the city's life and activities. As is always the case in great
towns, two hands are ever outstretched--that of Lazarus, pleading,
demanding, and that of Dives--more unselfish now than in the days of the
parable--giving again and yet again. Boston's philanthropists flatter
themselves that _there_ the giving is rather more judicious, as well as
generous, than is frequently the case; and that "the pauperizing of the
poor," that consummation devoutly to be avoided, is a minimized danger.
The "Central Charity Bureau" and the "Associated Charities" systematize
the work of relief, prevent imposture and duplication of charity, and do
an invaluable service to the different organizations. Private
subscriptions of citizens maintain the work, which is carried on in
three fine buildings of brick and stone on Chardon street, one of which
is used as a temporary home for destitute women and children. The
Massachusetts General Hospital--which, save for the Pennsylvania
Hospital, is the oldest in the country--the Boston City Hospital, the
New England Hospital for Women and Children, and a number of other
finely-organized institutions care efficiently for the city's sick and
suffering. Orphan asylums, reform schools, missions of various sorts,
and retreats for the aged and indigent, are numerous.
One of the most unique and interesting among these charities is "The
Children's Mission to the Children of the Destitute," which aims to
bring the little ones of these two sadly separated classes, the poor and
the well-to-do, in contact for their mutual benefit. By its agency the
forlorn little waifs of the streets are provided with home and friends,
religious and secular instruction, and employment whenever necessary or
advisable. Still more unique is the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics'
Association, whose vast building and hall on Huntingdon avenue occupies
an area of over 110,000 square feet. As early as 1795 this association
was founded to extend a helping hand to mechanics in difficulties, to
establish libraries and classes for apprentices, offer premiums for
inventions and improvements in trades, and give every encouragement to
the tradesman. The building is a beautiful as well as a vast structure,
and eight thousand people can be seated in the grand hall. The
mechanics' festivals, fairs, and exhibitions of industry are held here
from time to time, when there is much awarding of medals, prizes and
honors.
On Boston's commercial greatness there is no space to touch. Nor is it
needed. Could her schools, her churches, her charities, her
institutions, public and private, which have here been outlined,
flourish without the backbone of Puritan thrift and the framework of
prosperity which have made her one of the wealthiest of cities? The
solid business foundation is apparent to all who visit her teeming marts
and exchanges. But the "power behind the throne" is kept with rare
judgment in the background; and when the visitor comes to kiss the hand
of the "Queen of the Commonwealth" he sees only her chosen
handmaids--Ambition, Culture, Philanthropy, Religion. On these, finally,
she rests her claims to greatness.