44 OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK. 



executed by Martin Mil more, was Boston's tribute to 

 her fallen heroes of the Civil War. The Brener 

 Fountain is a beautiful bronze casting designed by 

 Lienard, of Paris, with bronze figures representing 

 Neptune, Amphitrite, Acis, and Galatea grouped round 

 the base. The late Gardner Brener presented it to the 

 city in 1868. 



To forget the Old Elm in describing the Common, 

 would be rank disrespect to that hoary "oldest inhabi- 

 tant," albeit nothing remains of it now but its memory. 

 An iron fence surrounds the spot where once it stood, 

 and a vigorous young sapling has ])roviclentially 

 sprung up in its place, as a successor. The Old Elm 

 was ancient in 1630, when the town was settled, and 

 was one of its most interesting landmarks up to 1876, 

 when it was blown down. 



The Public Garden, from which the beautifid Com- 

 monwealth avenue begins, the Back-Bay Park, which 

 cost a million of dollars, and the Arnold Arboretum, 

 where Harvard University has planted and maintained 

 a fine horticultural collection for the pleasure of the 

 public, are lovely spots on whose beauty the mind would 

 fain linger, but whose descriptions must be omitted, for 

 all Boston's splendid public buildings wait in stately 

 array their share of attention. Nowhere has the 

 skilled artist-architect been so freely permitted to carry 

 out his designs unhampered by stupidity and stinginess 

 as in Boston, and the result has been a collection of 

 public buildings unsurpassed by those of any modern 

 city. The Boston State House comes first, of course — 

 did not the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table '' term it, 

 with loving exaggeration, the " Hub of the Solar 

 System ? " From Beacon Hill, the most prominent 



