30 ENVIRONS OF BOSTON. [CHAP. II. 



Sumner, &quot; the Ohio, a ship of the line, of ninety guns, is now 

 swinging idly at her moorings. She costs as much annually to 

 maintain her in service, in salaries, wages, and provisions, as four 

 Harvard Universities.&quot; He might have gone on to calculate 

 how many primary schools might be maintained by the disband 

 ing of single regiments, or the paying off of single ships, of those 

 vast standing armies and navies now kept up in so many coun 

 tries in Europe. How much ignorance, bigotry, and savage 

 barbarism in the lower classes might be prevented by employing 

 in education a small part of the revenues required to maintain 

 this state of armed peace ! 



Sept. 22. At this season the wealthier inhabitants of Boston 

 are absent at watering-places in the hills, where there are mine 

 ral springs, or at the sea-side. Some of them in their country 

 villas, where we visited several friends in the neighborhood. The 

 environs of Boston are very agreeable ; woods and hills, and bare 

 rocks, and small lakes, and estuaries running far into the land, 

 and lanes with hedges, and abundance of wild flowers. The 

 extreme heat of summer does not allow of the green meadows 

 and verdant lawns of England, but there are some well-kept 

 gardens here a costly luxury where the wages of labor are so 

 high. 



Sept. 24. I had determined before the autumn was over to 

 make an excursion to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, 

 which, with the exception of those in part of the Alleghany 

 range in North Carolina, are the loftiest east of the Mississippi. 

 Accordingly, I set off with my wife on the railway for Ports 

 mouth, fifty-four miles north of Boston, which we reached in two 

 hours and three quarters, having stopped at several intervening 

 places, and going usually at the rate of twenty miles an hour. 

 There were about eighty passengers in the train, forty of whom 

 were in the same carriage as ourselves. &quot; The car,&quot; in shape 

 like a long omnibus, has a passage down the middle, sometimes 

 called &quot; the aisle,&quot; on the back part of which the seats are ranged 

 transversely to the length of the apartment, which is high enough 

 to allow a tall man to walk in it with his Jiat on. Each seat 

 holds two persons, and is well-cushioned and furnished with a 



