1826.] [841] 



LETTERS FROM THK UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA. 



No. II. 



Bosfon, A'ew England, Oct. 8, 1825. 



Let me give you a hurried sketch of this beautiful town — or city 

 rather, for now they call it a city, the " Emporium " of the wliole 

 Yankee territory. It is no longer a town ; for, within the last five or 

 six years, the people, growing weary of their old-fashioned ways, of 

 that popular form which made the municipal government of their sturdy 

 forefathers, about fifty years ago, so formidable, have changed the 

 vulgar title of a town, for that of a city,* and the hearty republican 

 sway for that of a more aristocratical shape — to say the least of it — if 

 not ot a more kingly shape : much good may it do them I But, for my 

 own part, if I were a native New-Englander, I do not say Bostonian, 

 but merely a iiative, so to speak, of the New-England or stout Yankee 

 territory, I would not exchange — I would not forego a tittle — I would 

 not give up a letter of that name — I would keep it for ever, the name of 

 a place, which, while it was heard of as a " little town of Massachusetts 

 Bay," nothing more — uprose and withstood all tlie power of Great 

 Britain, for the truth-sake ; no, I would not give up a letter of that 

 characteristic name, for all the profits and privileges of city government, 

 if they were multiplied forty times over. 



It was not the city of Boston, that blazed up, — up to the very skies, and 

 shot forth, over all North America, like a new pillar of fire — lighting the 

 whole of that vast country to warfare and fierce rebellion, fifty years ago, 

 about a small tax on a few bits of paper ; contending at sucli peril, and 

 braving the might of the whole British empire, about some half-under- 

 stood principle of taxation, associated with some other half-understood 

 principle of representation — both of which are well enough understood 

 now, to be sure ; — it was not the city of Boston, it was the toxvn of 

 Boston, the fortress and hope of the whole confederacjs the hardy, 

 brave nursling of Massachusetts Bay. There I do not charge me with 

 confusion of metaphor ; I hate allegory — one metaphor stuck to, for 

 half a page ; and I am getting rather fond of the style which I meet 

 with here,f a style which authorizes me to compare whatever I like — 

 a city, for example, to a rocket, a beacon, £r pillar of light, a something 

 with power to judge for itself, a fortress, a hope, and a babe, or nurs- 

 ling — a sort of infant Hercules ; and, what is more, all in the same breath, 

 all in the same paragraph. 



Boston is delightfully situated, occupying two or three broad eleva- 

 tions, that slope away on every side, even to the water's edge, while the 

 chief is crowned with a heavy sort of a top-heavy structure, which, 

 under the name of a state house, or stadt house — for, of a truth, it is 

 about one half Dutch — overlooks, not only the entire town, but all the 



• The commoners of England are proud enough, sometimes, to forego a title ; 

 the commoners of America, \vith all their disregard for a name, are not. I have 

 heard of no Mr. Cokes here. — A. B. C. 



f The style of which our friend speaks here, though partly Irish and partly Ameri- 

 can, is not properly of the north, any where. It is met with, to be sure, in the north, 

 but is never indigenous there, while, in the south, it is ; in the south, where people 

 are poets and orators by birth-right — always ready for a metaphor, which, when it 

 escapes, and escape it will, if you approach them, goes off like a flash of electricity. 

 And why not ? If one metaphor be good, why not more ? 'WTio would complain of a 

 cake made all of spice, or of all-spice ? — X. X. 



M. M. Nexv Series. — Vol. I. No. 3. 2 1 



