Ocean to Ocean on Horseback. Glazier Willard W.

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СКАЧАТЬ a Country" and other world-famous literary productions, and originator of the equally famous "Ten Times One" clubs.

      Boston's religious history is most interesting, although almost kaleidoscopic in its changes. From being the stronghold of Puritan orthodoxy it has become the headquarters of liberal Unitarianism. King's Chapel is a curious instance; originally an Episcopal church and congregation, it became Unitarian in 1787, retaining the Episcopal liturgy with necessary changes, and now doctrines are preached over the tombs of the dead dignitaries interred beneath the church floor, diametrically opposed to those in which they lived, died and were buried. Though all denominations of course flourish within her walls, Boston is still strongly Congregational in her leanings.

      From the churches to the schools is a natural transition. The founders of Boston's greatness placed the two influences side by side in importance, and their wisdom in doing so has had its justification. The current "poking of fun" at the "Boston school-ma'am," her glasses, her learning and her devotion to Browning; and the Boston infant, who converses in polysyllables almost from his birth, has its foundation in the fact, everywhere admitted, that nowhere are intelligence and culture so widely diffused in all ranks of life as in Boston. The free-school system, an experiment which she was the first American city to inaugurate, is considered by educators to lead the world. The city's annual expenditures for her public schools, of which there are over 500, amount to about $2,000,000, and from the kindergarten to the High School, where the pupils can be prepared for college, the youth of the city are carefully watched, trained, instructed, and all that is best in them drawn out. Even in summer, "vacation schools" are held, where the children who would otherwise be running wild in the streets can learn sewing, box-making, cooking and other useful branches.

      The English High and Latin School is the largest free public school building in the world, being 423 feet long by 220 feet wide. It is a fine structure in Renaissance style, with every advantage and improvement looking to health and convenience that even the progressive Boston mind could think of. It would be a sluggish soul indeed that would not be thrilled by the sight of the entire school-battalion going through its exercises in the immense drill-room, and realize the hopeful future for this vast army of coming citizens, who are thus early and thus admirably taught the priceless lesson of discipline.

      The Boston Normal School, the Girls' High School and the Public Latin School for girls, fully cover the demand for the higher education of women. The latter institution is the fruit of the efforts of the Society for the University Education of Women, and its graduates enter the female colleges with ease. Wellesley, the "College Beautiful," as its students have fondly christened it, is situated close to Boston in the beautiful village of Wellesley, where feminine education is conducted almost on ideal lines. No woman's college in the world has so many students, or so beautiful a home in which to shelter the fair heads, inwardly crammed and running over with knowledge, and outwardly adorned, either in fact or in prospective, with the scholastic cap of learning. Since its opening in 1875, Wellesley has almost created a new era in woman's education, and its curriculum is the same as those of the most advanced male colleges. The College Aid Society, which at an annual cost of from $6000 to $7000 helps ambitious girlhood, for whom straitened means would otherwise render a university education impossible, is an interesting feature of the college.

      What Wellesley has for twenty years been to American girlhood, Harvard University has for 150 years been to American young manhood, and though its chief departments are located at Cambridge, it may still be fairly ranked with Bostonian institutions. The tie which connects the Cambridge University and the capital of Massachusetts is closer than that existing between mere neighbors – it is a veritable bond of kinship. It might be said that from the opening of the University in 1638, Boston made Harvard and Harvard Boston. Its illustrious founder, John Harvard, was a resident of Charlestown, now a part of Boston – and his monument, erected by subscriptions of Harvard graduates, is one of the principal "sights" of that district, where it stands near the Old State Prison. To its classic groves Boston has sent, and from them received again, the noblest of her sons; and three of her departments, the Bussey Institution of Agriculture, the Medical School and the Dental School, are situated within the limits of Boston proper. Harvard University at present owns property valued at $6,000,000, and accommodates nearly 2000 pupils. In addition to the departments already mentioned and which are located in Boston, the principal sections are Harvard College, the Jefferson Laboratory, the Lawrence Scientific School, the new Law School, the Divinity School, the Harvard Library, Botanical Gardens, Observatory, Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, Peabody Museum of Archæology and Ethnology, Agassiz Museum, Hemenway Gymnasium and Memorial Hall. To wander through its ancient halls, the oldest of which dates back to 1720, and which have been used by Congress, is to visit the cradle of university education in America.

      Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the best scientific colleges on the continent, Tufts College and the celebrated Chauncy Hall School, are among the finest of Boston's many admirable educational institutions.

      Mention has been made of the Harvard Monument, but not of the others among the scores of fine examples of the sculptor's art which are scattered throughout the city in generous profusion for the delight and the education of the public eye. The famous Bunker Hill Monument was naturally one of the first objects sought out by the writer on the occasion of his first visit to Boston. This splendid shaft of granite was dedicated to the fallen patriots of Bunker Hill in 1841, the corner-stone having been laid in 1825 by General Lafayette – Daniel Webster delivering the orations on both occasions. Its site, on Monument Square, Breed's Hill, is the spot where the Americans threw up the redoubt on the night before the memorable battle, and a tablet at its foot marks the place where the illustrious Warren fell.

      The monument is 221-1/6 feet high – a fact fully realized only by climbing the 259 steps of the spiral staircase of stone in the interior of the shaft which leads to a small chamber near the apex, from which four windows look out upon the surrounding country – a superb vista. The cost of this monument was $150,000.

      In the Public Gardens, in the Back Bay district, across from Commonwealth avenue, may be seen one of the largest pieces of statuary in America, and, according to some connoisseurs, the handsomest in Boston. This is Ball's huge statue of Washington, which measures twenty-two feet in height. The statue was unveiled in 1869, and it is said that not a stroke of work was laid upon it by any hand of artisan or artist outside of Massachusetts. The Beacon street side of the Public Gardens contains another famous statue – that of Edward Everett, by W. W. Story. Other great citizens whose memory has been perpetuated in life-like marble are Samuel Adams, William Lloyd Garrison and Colonel William Prescott. The Emancipation Group is a duplicate of the "Freedman's Memorial" statue in Washington. The soldiers' monuments in Dorchester, Charlestown, Roxbury, West Roxbury and Brighton commemorate the unnamed, uncounted, but not unhonored dead who laid down their lives on the battlefields of the Civil War.

      "The bravely dumb who did their deed,

      And scorned to blot it with a name;

      Men of the plain, heroic breed,

      Who loved Heaven's silence more than fame."

      An interesting object is the Ether Monument on the Arlington street side of the Public Gardens erected in recognition of the fact that it was in the Massachusetts General Hospital – in the face of terrible opposition and coldness and discouragement, as history tells us, though the marble does not – that Dr. Sims first gave the world his wonderful discovery of the power of ether to cause insensibility to pain.

      That there should be so many of these fine pieces in Boston's parks and public places is matter for congratulation but scarcely for surprise. As a patron of music, literature, art and all the external graces of civilization she has so long and so easily held her supremacy that one is half inclined to believe that at least a delegation of the Muses, if not the whole sisterhood, had exchanged the lonely and unappreciated grandeur of Parnassus for a seat on one of Boston's three hills. The Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest musical society in the United States; the Harvard Musical Association; the famous Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus СКАЧАТЬ