ing in the distance. At about half-past four we reached Boston (which name has been shortened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation, from Botolph's town) and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough; and we were shown into a small stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco smoke, -tobacco smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, too, apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of this English Boston. "In my first ramble about the town, chance led me to the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated. . . . Down the river I saw a brig, approaching rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle and sluggishness and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life; and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town; - the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf and Faneuil Hall, and Washington street and the Great Elm and the State House, and exulted lustily, but yet began to feel at home in this good old town, for its very name's sake, as I never had before felt in England.' The next day Hawthorne visited "a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short time since. According to our friend's description it was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, with a thatched roof. In the righthand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which at the time of our visit was in process of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Cotton, whom these English people consider as the founder of our American Boston. . The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine and satisfactory, as stately almost as a cathedral, and has been repaired — as far as repairs were necessary in a chaste and noble style. When we came away the tower of St. Botolph's looked benignantly down; and I fancied that it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard." 66 It is of this tower with its beacon and its bells that we hear in Jean Ingelow's touching poem, High Tide On the Coast of Lincolnshire." St. Botolph, the pious Saxon monk of the seventh century, who is believed to have founded the town, received his name, indeed, Bot-holp, i. e. Boat-help, from his service to sailors; and the high tower was originally designed to be a guide to those out at sea, six miles down the river. An account of the town written in 1541 tells the whole story, in one terse paragraph: "Botolphstowne standeth on ye river of Lindis. The steeple of the church " being quadrata Turris' and a lanthorn on it, is both very high & faire and a mark bothe by sea and land for all ye quarters thereaboute." Perhaps it was remembrance of what the beacon in St. Botolph's tower had meant to the people of Lincolnshire which caused the Court of Assistants, assembled in new Boston, to pass the following resolution March 4, 1634: "It is ordered that there shalbe forth with a beacon sett on the Centry hill at Boston to give notice to the Country of any danger, and that there shalbe a ward of one pson kept there from the first of April to the last of September; 1 |