LIFE OF WILSON. Ixxix 



with its soil, and of whom a mean, beggarly pillar 'of bricks 

 is all the memento." 



TO MR. D. H. MILLER. 



Windsor, Vermont, October 26, 1808. 

 "Dear Sir, 



" I wrote you two or three weeks ago from Boston, where I 

 spent about a week. A Mr. S., formerly private secretary to 

 John Adams, introduced me to many of the first rank in the 

 place, whose influence procured me an acquaintance with others; 

 and I journied through the streets of Boston with my book, as 

 I did at New York and other places, visiting all the literary 

 characters I could find access to. 



" I spent one morning examining Bunker's Hill, accompa- 

 nied by lieutenant Miller and sergeant Carter, two old soldiers 

 of the revolution, who were both in that celebrated battle, and 

 who pointed out to me a great number of interesting places. 

 The brother of general Warren, who is a respectable physician 

 of Boston, became very much my friend, and related to me 

 many other matters respecting the engagement. 



" I visited the University at Cambridge, where there is a fine 

 library, but the most tumultuous set of students I ever saw. 



" From the top of Bunker's Hill, Boston, Charlestown, the 

 ocean, islands and adjacent country, form the most beautifully 

 varied prospect I ever beheld. 



" The streets of Boston are a perfect labyrinth. The markets 

 are dirty; the fish market is so filthy that I will not disgust you 

 by a description of it. Wherever you walk you hear the most 

 hideous howling, as if some miserable wretch were expiring on 

 the wheel at every corner; this, however, is nothing but the 

 draymen shouting to their horses. Their drays are twenty-eight 

 feet long, drawn by two horses, and carry ten barrels of flour. 

 From Boston I set out for Salem, the country between swampy, 

 and in some places the most barren, rocky, and desolate in na- 

 ture. Salem is a neat little town. The wharves were crowded 

 with vessels. One wharf here is twenty hundred and twenty- 



