84 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



more truly a capital than any other city in America, 

 before or since, except possibly Charleston. The acknow 

 ledged head of New England, with a population of well- 

 nigh purely English descent, mostly derived from the 

 earlier emigration, with ancestral traditions and inspiring 

 memories of its own, it had made its name familiar 

 in both worlds, and was both historically and politi 

 cally more important than at any later period. The 

 Revolution had not interrupted, but rather given a freer 

 current to the tendencies of its past. Both by its history 

 and position, the town had what the French call a 

 solidarity, an almost personal consciousness, rare anywhere, 

 rare especially in America, and more than ever since our 

 enormous importation of fellow-citizens, to whom America 

 means merely shop, or meat three times a-day. Boston has 

 been called the &quot;American Athens.&quot; ^sthetically, the com 

 parison is ludicrous, but politically it was more reasonable. 

 Its population was homogeneous, and there were leading 

 families ; while the form of government by town-meeting, 

 and the facility of social and civic intercourse, gave great 

 influence to popular personal qualities and opportunity to 

 new men. A wide commerce, while it had insensibly 

 softened the asperities of Puritanism and imported enough 

 foreign refinement to humanise, not enough foreign luxury 

 to corrupt, had not essentially qualified the native tone of 

 the town. Retired sea-captains (true brothers of Chaucer s 

 Shipman), whose exploits had kindled the imagination of 

 Burke, added a not unpleasant savour of salt to society. 

 They belonged to the old school of Gilbert, Hawkins, 

 Frobisher, and Drake, parcel-soldiers all of them, who 

 had commanded armed ships, and had tales to tell of 

 gallant fights with privateers or pirates, truest represent 

 atives of those Vikings who, if trade in lumber or peltry 

 was dull, would make themselves Dukes of Dublin or Earls 

 of Orkney. If trade pinches the mind, commerce liberalises 

 it; and Boston was also advantaged with the neighbourhood 

 of the country s oldest College, which maintained the whole 

 some traditions of culture, where Homer and Horace are 



