lviii 
LIFE OF 
indifferent looking frame house, I found this extraordinary man, 
sitting wrapt in a night gown, the table before him covered with 
newspapers, with pen and ink beside him. Paine’s face would 
have excellently suited the character of Bardolph ; but the pene- 
tration and intelligence of his eye bespeak the man of genius and 
of the world. He complained to me of his inability to walk, an 
exercise he was formerly fond of ; he examined my book, leaf by 
leaf, with great attention ; desired me to put down his name as a 
subscriber ; and, after inquiring particularly for Mr P. and Mr B. 
wished to be remembered to both. 
“ My journey through almost the whole of New England has 
rather lowered the Yankees in my esteem. Except a few neat 
academies, I found their school-houses equally ruinous and deserted 
with ours ; fields covered with stones ; stone fences ; scrubby 
oaks, and pine trees ; wretched orchards ; scarcely one grain field 
in twenty miles ; the taverns along the road, dirty, and filled with 
loungers, brawling about law-suits and politics ; the people snappish 
and extortioners, lazy, and two hundred years behind the Pennsyl- 
vanians in agricultural improvements. I traversed the country 
bordering the river Connecticut for nearly two hundred miles. 
Mountains rose on either side, sometimes three, six, or eight miles 
apart, the space between almost altogether alluvial ; the plains 
fertile, but not half cultivated. From some projecting headlands 
I had immense prospects of the surrounding countries, every where 
clothed in pine, hemlock, and scrubby oak. 
“ It was late in the evening when I entered Boston, and, whirling 
through the narrow lighted streets, or rather lanes, I could form 
but a very imperfect idea of the town. Early the next morning, 
resolved to see where I was, I sought out the way to Beacon Hill, 
the highest part of the town, and whence you look down on the 
roofs of the houses — the bay, interspersed with islands — the 
ocean — the surrounding country, and distant mountains of New 
Hampshire ; but the most singular objects are the long wooden 
bridges, of which there are five or six, some of them three quarters 
of a mile long, uniting the towns of Boston and Charleston with 
each other, and with the main land. I looked round, with an eager 
eye, for that eminence, so justly celebrated in the history of the 
revolution of the United States, — Bimhers Hill ; but I could see 
