which does not reproduce the exact language and manners of the period, can have much value. Such an attempt requires a long and familiar practice, or a higher order of genius than I can pretend to possess. I have aspired only to take up a humble position upon that which Scott calls the extensive neutral ground of manners and sentiments that are common to us and our ancestors, arising out of the principles of our common nature, and existing alike in both states of society. The difficulty of reproducing even such an imperfect picture of the domestic manners of our ancestors, where hints are to be gleaned in the records of probate-offices and the invoices of vessels, will, I trust, appeal to the candor of my readers to pardon the presumptuous attempt. DECEMBER 1, 1847. E. B. L. NAOMI: OR BOSTON TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. CHAPTER I. "Look now abroad, another race has filled These populous borders; wide the wood recedes, BRYANT. LET us ascend one of the many elevated spots in the vicinity of Boston; we look around upon a beautiful panorama of protecting hills, now dotted with sheltered and cultivated farms, garden farms, like that of Eden; then gaze a moment upon the continued chain of towns that have not yet lost the white gloss of newness, and that, like a shining silver fringe, encircle the skirts of the hills. Then, as the eye rests upon the modest towers where science and learning dwell, or is lifted to the iron walls where Christian love ministers to the broken spirit (however much we may wish the several positions reversed, that the torch of science were lighted upon the hill-tops, and the darkened mind and broken spirit sheltered in the valley), the soul is yet filled with gratitude. We feel the throbbing of the air and the trembling of the ground as the frequent engine shoots arrowy by, leaving its long trail of smoke, and the sharp vibration of its whistle on the ear. With an effort, we recollect that scarcely two centuries ago this varied picture was all one unbroken forest, in the language of the time "a howling wilderness," - all but a few little scattered specks, where the smoke of human habitations rose in the twilight air; and we feel awed by the power of the giant Time, who, as he has trodden lightly or heavily over the two centuries, has wrought these changes and left these marks of his footsteps. At the period when the incidents that fill the following pages occurred, Boston had been settled just thirty years. At the point of the peninsula, in the crescent between its two protecting hills, nestled the little prosperous town, sheltered on the north by its beautiful green eminence, with its undulating line of summit, that gave it the name of Trimountain; while, separated by the expanding mouth of the royal Charles, the twin town of Winnisimmet, beautifully planted on the opposite heights, was seen clinging to the hill-side. Thirty years had passed since the arrival of Winthrop and his company. Although they surmounted undreamedof hardships, almost miraculous prosperity had attended their pious enterprise. Both Copps and Fort Hills were now well fortified; the former being well mounted with heavy artillery, the latter protected by a strong battery made of the giant trees of the ready forest. Upon the third, the green eminence already mentioned, was placed a beacon, ready to be lighted at the approach of danger. The little settlement, sheltered in the lap of these three hills, had already assumed the appearance of a considerable and very active and enterprising town. It is true that no steeple yet rose above, pointing the thoughts heavenward, but many goodly houses had been built. The streets within the crescent formed by the two projecting eminences were narrow and winding, laid out apparently as convenience dictated paths to the first settlers; but beyond, towards Beacon Hill and the isthmus, or Neck, "were many beautiful squares for gardens and orchards, with large and spacious houses, some fairly set forth with brick, tile, slate, and stone, and orderly placed, whose continual enlargement," saith Johnson, "presageth some sumptuous city. And these streets were full of boys and girls sporting up and down, with a continual concourse of people." * One generation of the emigrants had passed away, and slept, not with their fathers in consecrated tombs beneath cathedral domes, nor in green, sheltered grave-yards under Gothic spires that spread their ivy tracery to woo the breezes of England, but in honored graves, beneath the virgin sod, or lulled by ocean waves upon a rocky bed. The honored Winthrop, the Puritan saint, Cotton, the humble-minded Shepherd of Cambridge, the strong-hearted Hooker, had all passed away, they and those noble women, their wives, and had carried with them much that had formed the peculiar character, the grace and charm, of the first colonization of Boston Bay. These first settlers brought with them the genial influences, the refining culture, of a high state of civilization. The next generation were sterner and harsher men. They were the sons, born or educated in this less genial soil, of those men who had grown and ripened in England before they set foot upon it, and they partook, perhaps, of the rougher and colder climate. The snow of their exterior, hiding the beautiful vegetation of Christian love, was deeper than that of their fathers, and the rock required repeated strokes to bring forth the sparkling waters of refreshing grace. * Johnson's description of Boston in 1657. The children of the first settlers, the first generation born upon the soil of New England, grew up in the absence of all those beautiful, humanizing, and softening influences that belonged to the mother land. Their first experience of life was a sombre and cold climate, a hard, rocky, and sterile soil. The wealth brought by their fathers had been expended in providing the first means of living, the necessary wants of that first colonization; and, although they began immediately again to accumulate riches with the aid of a most prosperous commerce, the first generation experienced from infancy many hardships, and acquired a character of stern resistance, an intrepid boldness and unwearied perseverance in contending with outward circumstances. They grew up, also, in the absence of all those influences that fill the mind with the sentiment of loyalty, perhaps the most graceful of all sentiments, as it gives dignity to the humility with which we regard the object of our loyal affection. Reverence for God, reverence for law, took the place of the sentiment of loyalty. Here was no court, no monarch, no pageantry of rank or power, no imposing church nor bishop; and, as a boy advanced into manhood, there was nothing above him but the broad heavens, nothing around him but law and order, to which his proud spirit must bend and subject itself. The genial influences of antiquity, also, were lost to the second race born in New England, as they have been for all succeeding generations here. The venerable cathedral, the old gray abbeys, the mouldering monuments, the consecrated church-yards, the old stone cross guarding the consecrated spring or fountain, all these ancient symbols, all that way-side poetry of life that met the wanderer at every step in England, were wholly lost here. Only the grand and ever-eloquent features of nature could |