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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 siècle 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 £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.