In the letters we get from Dr. Schliemann (interesting but fishy) about
his excavations there in the far-off Homeric area, I notice cities,
ruins, &c., as he digs them out of their graves, are certain to be in
layers--that is to say, upon the foundation of an old concern, very
far down indeed, is always another city or set of ruins, and upon
that another superadded--and sometimes upon that still another--each
representing either a long or rapid stage of growth and development,
different from its predecessor, but unerringly growing out of and
resting on it. In the moral, emotional, heroic, and human growths, (the
main of a race in my opinion,) something of this kind has certainly
taken place in Boston. The New England metropolis of to-day may
be described as sunny, (there is something else that makes warmth,
mastering even winds and meteorologies, though those are not to be
sneez'd at,) joyous, receptive, full of ardor, sparkle, a certain
element of yearning, magnificently tolerant, yet not to be fool'd; fond
of good eating and drinking--costly in costume as its purse can buy;
and all through its best average of houses, streets, people, that
subtle something (generally thought to be climate, but it is not--it is
something indefinable in the _race_, the turn of its development) which
effuses behind the whirl of animation, study, business, a happy and
joyous public spirit, as distinguish'd from a sluggish and saturnine
one. Makes me think of the glints we get (as in Symonds's books) of the
jolly old Greek cities. Indeed there is a good deal of the Hellenic in
B., and the people are getting handsomer too--padded out, with freer
motions, and with color in their faces. I never saw (although this is
not Greek) so many _fine-looking gray-hair'd women_. At my lecture
I caught myself pausing more than once to look at them, plentiful
everywhere through the audience--healthy and wifely and motherly, and
wonderfully charming and beautiful--I think such as no time or land but
ours could show.