36 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK. 



sixty feet higli, dedlcaiea to the fallen heroes of 

 Bunker Hill, had been erected on the spot and of 

 course removed when the mound was levelled. The 

 site of Washington's old lodgings at Court and Han- 

 over street — a fine colonial mansion, later occupied by 

 Daniel Webster and by Harrison Gray Otis, the cele- 

 brated lawyer — is now taken up by an immense 

 wholesale and retail grocery store ; the splendid Han- 

 cock mansion, where the Revolutionary patriot enter- 

 tained Lafayette, D'Estaing, and many other notabili- 

 ties of the day, was torn down in 1863, despite the pro- 

 tests of antiquarian enthusiasts. The double house, 

 in one part of which Lafayette lived in 1825, is still 

 standing; the other half of it was occupied during his 

 lifetime by a distinguished member of that unsur- 

 passed group of literati who helped win for Boston so 

 much of her intellectual pre-eminence — George 

 Ticknor, the Spanish historian, the friend of Holmes, 

 Lowell, Whittier and Longfellow, from whom the 

 latter is supposed to have drawn his portrait of the 

 "Historian '' in his " Tales of a Wayside Inn." The 

 Boston Public Libraiy. that magnificent institution, 

 which has done so much to spread '^sweetness and 

 liirht/' to use Matthew Arnolds' celebrated definition 

 of culture, among the people of the " Hub,'^ counts 

 Mr. Ticknor among the most generous of its bene- 

 factors. 



One interesting spot for the historical pilgrim is the 

 oldest inn in Boston, the " Hancock House, '^ near 

 Faneuil Hall, which sheltered Talleyrand and Louis 

 Philippe during the French reign of terror. 



In addition to the fever for improvement, Boston 

 ewes the loss of many of her time-hallowed buildings 



