V^^y \^^\<> V^^.o** ^ •r.« .-{.^ ^' ■ \ -.11^** **'"^^ '"■"™'* /\ -.w** **'"^^ • V*^ ^\ ^ i^.* ,/\.^ \1K*^ ^ ,*^\ . -'^m- ./"^-^ <> 'o. ^o.;*'T7r^\A . *4o^ <> '• OLD LANDMARKS OP MIDDLESEX. BT THE SAME AUTBOR. OLD LANDMARKS HISTORIC PERSONAGES BOSTON. One Volume. 12mo. With 100 Illustrationa. $!2.00. %• Sent, post-paid, on receipt of price by the Pub- lishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1895. m-:] - ^ 5 A? • '/' y. ^y'. Old Landmarks AND Historic Fields OF MIDDLESEX. By SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE. IllusttateO. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1895. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Receiver OCT. 12 1901 COPVPIOHT ENTRY CLASS <^ XXc No. COPY B. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPAxNTY, in the Ofi&ce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THIRD EDITION. Samfactsttg ^rcss : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. INVITATION TO THE EEADER. THIS is neither a county history nor a relation of con- secutive events, but a series of historic-colloquial ram- bles among the memorable places of Old Middlesex. Arm in arm we thread the Colonial highways, reading history, recounting traditions, and discussing men and events with much freedom, — challenging as we go the dwellings of former generations to yield up their secrets, not indeed to reproduce spectres, but living objects, — rehabilitating the Old and arraying it beside the New. At parting I shall hope you will have no cause to regret our companionship. Our saunterings are chiefly in those ways made famous by the earhest warlike events of the Eevolution, pausing, incidentally, to trace the almost obliterated vestiges of the siege, with pictures of the camps and portraits of the char- acters, civil and military, of the time, considered as men and not as gods. History of battles or campaigns should, as I think, ena- ble the student to go upon the ground, and with book in hand follow the movements of contending armies as they actually occurred. As much as fias been written of the eleven months' campaign for the possession of Boston, I have not found any modern author who has brought his narrative of the military operations and topography into correspondence, and in so far as this may be accounted a deficiency, have endeavored to supply it. Foremost, also, among my motives is the knowledge that the exigencies VI INVITATION TO THE READER. of commerce or of overflowing population are changing the face of Xature beyond all power of recognition. With pen and pencil I seek to establish some slight memorials on which the future explorer may lean a little as he takes up and brings forward the chain. At this day the ancient shire, our subject, exerts a weighty influence in the nation. She contributes a Vice- President, Cabinet Minister, Senator, and three of the eleven Representatives to which the State is entitled in its councils. Who have been her children in the past will appear as we proceed. The map which is joined to this volume is of great rarity, and is now, by the kindness of Dr. Wheatland of Salem, for the first tune reproduced in exact facsimile. With its help we discover the appearance of Colonial Bos- ton and its environs of a century ago. It may be con- sulted with confidence. The view from the IS'avy-Yard, showing Bunker Hill previous to the erection of the mon- ument, is from a painting by Mrs. Hannah Armstrong, nee Crowninshield. I trust these pages may bear to the many friends to whom I am under obligations the evidence of the faithful- ness of my endeavors to portray what has seemed most Avorthy in Old New England Life. " Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert jield ; The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar. " Melrose, October 29, 1873. CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. Environs of Boston. — Charles River. — History of the Bridges. — Lemuel Cox. — Charlestown in the Olden Time. —John Harvard. — The Night Surprise at Doncaster. — William Rainsborrow. — Robert Sedgwick. — Nathaniel Gorham. — Washington and Hancock. — Jedediah Morse. — Anecdote of Dr. Gardiner. —Samuel F. B. Morse. —His first Telegraph. — Charlotte Cushman's Home. — Her dehut in England . CHAPTER II. AN HOUR IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD. Origin of Charlestown Navy- Yard. — Wapping. — Nicholson and the Constitution. — Commandants of the Yard. — Constitution and Java. — Commodore Hull. — George Claghom. — The Park of ArtUlery. — Cannon in the Revolution. — Compared with Woolwich. — Naval Bat- tle in Boston Harbor. — Anecdotes of Lord Nelson. — Tribute to Algiers. — Hopkins. — Paul Jones. —Projectiles. —Invention of the Anchor. — The Dry-Dock. — Josiah Barker. — Captain Dewey and the Constitution's Figure-Head. — Famous Ships built here. — Launch of the Merrimac. — Masts, Sheathing, and Conductors. — The Origin of "U. S." — Iron Clads. —Landing of Sir William Howe. —Area of the Yard. — The Naval Institute 26 CHAPTER III. BUNKER HILL AND THE MONUMENT. Coup d'ceil from the Hill. — British Regiments in the Battle. — Their Arms, Dress, and Colors.— Anecdotes of the Royal Welsh. — Losses and Incidents of the Battle. — Lords Rawdon and Harris. —John vm CONTENTS. Cofiin. — Admiral Graves, — Generals Small, Burgoyne, and Pigot. — TriimbuH's Painting. — The Command. — American Officers engaged. — Putnam's Exertions . — The Redoubt. — Other Intrenchments. — Vestiges of the Works. — Singular Powers of American Officers. — Fall of Warren. — The Slaughter. — History of the Monuments. — Bunker Hill Proper and Works. — Middlesex Canal . . . .52 CHAPTER IV. THE CONTINENTAL TRENCHES. Military Roads in 1775. — Moimt Benedict. — General Lee at the Outpost. — Morgan's Rifles. — Burning of the Ursuline Convent. — Governor Winthrop and Ten Hills. —Robert Temple. —Redoubts at Ten Hills. — General Sullivan. — Samuel Jaques. — Winter Hill fortified. — View of Sullivan's Camp and Fort. — Scammell, Wilkinson, Burr, and Arnold. — Anecdote of Vanderlyn, the Painter. — Dearborn at Monmouth. — Hessian Encampment. — Will Yankees fight ? 83 CHAPTER V. THE OLD WAYSIDE MILL. Its History and Description, — A Colonial Magazine. — Removal of the Powder by General Gage. — Washington and the Powder Scarcity. — Expedients to supply the Army. — A Legend of the Powder House . 110 CHAPTER VI. THE PLANTATION AT MYSTIC SIDE. The Royall Mansion and Family. — Flight of Colonel Royall. — John Stark occupies the House. — Anecdotes of Stark. —Bennington and its Results. — Pi'isoners brought to Boston. — The Bennington Guns. — Lee and Sullivan at Colonel Royall's. — Hobgoblin Hall. — Taverns and Travel in former Times. — Old Medford and its Inns. —Shipbuild- ing. — John Brooks at Bemis's Heights. — Governor Cradock's Planta- tion-House. — Political Coup d'etat by the Massachusetts Company. — Cradock's Agents. — Reflections 119 CHAPTER VII. lee's headquarters and vicinity. Lee's Headquarters. — Was he a Traitor ? — Anecdotes of the General. — The Surprise at Baskingridge. — Meeting of Washington and Lee at Monmouth. — Lee's Will and Death. — Works on Prospect Hill de- CONTENTS. IX scribed. — General Greene's Command. — Washington's Opinion of (jreeue. — Retires from the Army embarrassed. — Eli Whitney. — How the Provincials mounted Artillery. — Their Resources in this Arm. — Massachusetts Regiment of ArtUlery. — Small- Arms.— Putnam's Flag- Raising. —Deacon Whitcomb. — Colonel Wesson, — Union Standard hoisted. — Quarters of Burgoyne's Troops.— Appearance of British and Hessians. — Mutinous Conduct of Prisoners. — They are transferred to Rutland. — They march to Virginia. — Horrible Domestic Tragedy. — Remains of the Old Defences 141 CHAPTER VIII. OLD CHARLESTOWN ROAD, LECHMERE'S POINT, AND PUTNAM'S HEADQUARTERS. Executions in Middlesex. — Site of the Gibbet. —Works on Cobble Hill. — Sketches of Colonel Knox. — He brings Battering Train from Crown Point. — Mrs. Knox. — Joseph Barrell. — His Mansion-House. — McLean Asylum. — Miller's River. — Lechmere's Point. — Access to in 1775. — Fortification of. — Bombardment of Boston. — The Evacua- tion. — Career and Fate of Mike Martin. —Cambridge Lines described. Ralph Inman's. — Captain John Linzee's Courtship. — Putnam at Inman's. — Anecdotes of Putnam. — Margaret Fuller. — Allston and his Works 169 CHAPTER IX. A DAT AT HARVARD. Old Cambridge. — An Episcopal See contemplated. — Dr. Apthorp. — BurgojTie's Quarters. — Dana Mansion. — David Phips. — General Gookin. — First Observatory at Harvard. — Gore Hall and the College Library. —Father Rale's Dictionary. —His cruel Fate. —The Presi- dent's House. — Distingiiished Occupants. — Willard. — Kirkland. — Quincy.— Everett. —Increase Mather and Witchcraft. — Thomas Dud- ley. _ Topography. — Bradish's Tavern. —First Church. —Old Court- House and Jail. — Laws and Usages of the Colonists. —Dane Hall. — Only two Attorneys in Massachusetts 195 CHAPTER X. A DAT AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. Founding and Account of First College Buildings. — College Press. — Stephen Daye. —Samuel Greene. — Portraits in Massachusetts Hall. — College Lotteries. — Governor Bernard. — The Quadrangle. — College CONTENTS. Customs. — The Clubs. — Commencement. — Dress of Students. — Ox- ford Caps. — George Downing. — Class of 1763. — Outbreaks of the Students. — The American Lines 221 CHAPTER XI. CAMBRIDGE CAMP. Early Military Organization by the Colony, — Soldier of 1630. — A Troop in 1675. — The Bayonet invented. — Formation of a Provincial Army. — Cambridge Common, — The Continental Parades. — Arrange- ment of the Army. — Its Condition in July, 1775. — Want of Distin- giushing Colors. — Attempts to uniform. — Army Headquarters. — Jonathan Hastings. — Explanation of the word "Yankee." — Captain Benedict Arnold. — Committee of Safety. — General Ward. — His In- trepidity in Shays's Rebellion. — Warren en route to Bunker Hill. — Professor Pearson. — Abiel Holmes. — 0. W. Holmes. — Lines to Old Ironsides 245 CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. Dr. Waterhouse. — Inoculation. — Siege Cannon. — Whitefield's Elm. — The Washington Elm. — The Haunted House. — Important Crises in Washington's Career. — Visits the Old South Church. — New England Church Arcliitecture. — Christ Church. — Occupied by Troops. — The Ancient Burial-Place. — Judge Trowbridge. — Old Brattle House. — Thomas Brattle. —General Mifflin. —Judge Story. — W. W. Story.— The Windmill. — Jonathan Belcher. — Benjamin Church's Treachery 264 CHAPTER XIII. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. Visit to Mr. Longfellow. — Colonel John Vassall. — Colonel John Glover. — Washington takes Possession. — His personal Appearance, Habits, and Dress. — Continental Uniform. — Peale's Portrait. — Order of March 17, 1776. —The General's Military Family. —His Pugnacity. — Chi- rography of his Generals. — Monmouth again. — Anecdo^tes. — " Lord " Stirling and Lady Kitty. — Lafayette^ and his Family. — French Generals in our Service. —Washington's, Napoleon's, and Wellington's Orders. — Councils of War. — Arrival of Mrs. Washington. — The Household. — Formation of the Body-Guard. — Caleb Gibbs. — Na- thaniel Tracy. — Andrew Craigie. — Talleyrand and Prince Edward. — Jared Sparks and other Occupants. — Longfellow becomes an Inmate 289 I I CONTENTS. XI CHAPTEE XIV. OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. Sewall Mansion. — Jonathan and John. —General Riedesel. —Prisoners of War in 1777. — How the German Flags were saved. —Judge Lee. — Thomas Fayerweather. —Governor Gerry's. — Thomas Oliver. — Polit- ical Craft. —The Gerrymander. —Dr. LoweU.— James RusseU Lowell. — Speculations. — Caroline Giknau 313 CHAPTER XV. MOUNT AUBURN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. Thoughts. —The Tower. —Pere la Chaise. —Dr. Jacob Bigelow. — Indifference which old Cemeteries experience. — Funeral Rites. — Duration of Bones. —The Chapel and Statuary. — The Origin of Mount Auburn. — Fresh Pond. — A Refuge on the Day of Lexington. — NatWyeth's Expedition to the Pacific. —The Ice-Traffic. — Fred- erick Tudor. — Richardson's Tavern. — Cock-Fighting. — Old Water- town Graveyard. — Rev. George Phillips. — Provincial Congress. — Rev. William Gordon. — Edes's Printing-Office. — Sign of Mr. Wilkes. — John Cook's and the Colony Notes. — Thomas Prentice. — Joseph Ward. — Michael Jackson. — Nonantum Hill. — General Hull. —The Apostle EUot 326 CHAPTER XVI. LECHMERE'S POINT TO LEXINGTON. Discovery of Gage's Plans. — American Preparations for War. — British Reconnoissauce. — Colonel Smith lands at Lechmere's Point. — His March. — Tlie Country alarmed. — Philip d'Auvergne. — Pitcairn ar- rives at Lexington Green. — Who is responsible ? — Topography. — Battle Monument. — Disposition of the Dead. —The Clark House. — Hancock and Adams. — Dorothy Q. — The Battle of Lexington in England 354 CHAPTER XVII. LEXINGTON TO CONCORD. The Approach to Concord. — The Wayside. — Ha^vthorne. — A. Bronson Alcott. — Louisa. — May. — R. W. Emerson. — Thoveau. — Concord on the Day of Invasion. — Ephraim Jones and John Pitcairn. — Colonel Archibald Campbell. — 71st Highlanders. — Anecdote of Simon Eraser. — Mill Pond. — Timothy Wheeler's Ruse-de-guerre. — The Hill Bury- ing-Groimd. — The Slave's Epitaph 371 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. THE RETREAT FROM CONCORD. The Battle Monument. — The two Graves. — Position of the Americans. — The Old Manse. — Hawthorne's Study. — The Old House over the Way. —The Troops retreat. —John Brooks attacks them. —A Kout described. —A Percy to the Kescue. — The Royal Artillery. — Old Munroe Tavern. — Anxiety in Boston. —Warren and Heath take Part. — Action in Menotomy. — Eliphalet Downer's Duel. — His Escape from a British Prison. — The Slaughter at Jason Russell's. — Incidents. — Percy escapes. — Contemporary Accounts of the Battle. — Monu- ments at Acton and Arlington CHAPTER XIX. A FRAGMENT OF KING PHILIP's WAR. South Sudbury. - Outbreak of Philip's War. — Measures in the Colony -Marlborough attacked. —Descent on Sudbury. —Defeat and Death of Captam Wadsworth. - Wadsworth Monument. -Relics of Philip. — The Wayside Inn. -Ancient Taverns vs. Modern Hotels. — The Interior of the Wayside.— Early Post-Routes in New England -Jour- ney of Madam Knight in 1704 .... 410 CHAPTER XX. THE HOME OF RUMFORD. Birthplace of Count Rumford. — His Early Life. — The Old Shop near Boston Stone. — Rumford's Marriage, Arrest, and Flight. — Bequest to Harvard College. — Portrait of the Count. — Thomas Graves, the Admiral 427 ILLUSTRATIONS. ♦ Page Belcher Arms 285 Belcher {Portrait) 285 Bunker Hill from the Navy- Yard, about 182t) .... 26 Bunker Hill Monument 52 British Flag captured at Yorktown 54 Brattle Arms 281 Broken Gravestone 276 Cannon and Carriage used before Boston 153 Cannon dismantled 83 Charlestown Navy- Yard in 1873 36 " 1858 38 Chauncy Arms 208 Flag of WASHmoTON's Life-Guard 308 Flag of Morgan's Rifles 87 Fort on Cobble Hill 172 GooKiN Arms 200 Gore Hall, 1873 202 Great Harry . . . . . . . . . . .35 Harvard College Lottery Ticket {Fac-simile of an Origirud) . 227 Harvard's Monument 11 Hessian Flag 106 Ki^G V-RTLTP {from, an old Print) 414 Lexington Monument 362 Lowell Arms 322 Map of Boston and Environs in 1775 . . . fO'Ciny title Mount Auburn Gateway 326 Mount Auburn Chapel 83;' XIV ILLUSTRATIONS. Nix's Mate 170 Quadrangle Harvard College 231 Sewall-Riedesel Mansion 313 Sign of the Wayside Inn 421 Smith, Captain John 3 Stanch and Strong 39 Trophies of Bennington 1 Ursuline Convent in Ruins 91 Washington Statue (Ball's) 295 Wendell Arms 255 Washington Elm, 1873 267 WiLLARD Arms 207 NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The close relationship which this volume bears to the " Old Landmarks of Boston " has determined the adoption of a similar general title for both. As companions, they now fulfil the original design. Since the first edition of " Middlesex " was printed, Charlestown has become a part of Boston; and these rambles conduct where the most memorable events of her history lead us. A new edition permits such revision as incessant change has rendered needful to a correct reading of the text. S. A. D. Boston, April 24, 1876. CHAPTER I. THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. ''A Slip of New England's Aire is better than a whole draught of Old England's Ale." THE charming belt of country around Boston is full of in- terest to Americans. It is diversified with every feature that can make a landscajDe attractive. Town clasps hands with town until the girdle is complete where Nahant and ^N'antasket sit with their feet in the Atlantic. The whole region may be compared to one vast park, where nature has wrought in savage grandeur what art has subdued into a series of delightful pictures. N"o one portion of the zone may claim precedence. There is the same shifting panorama visible from every rugged height that never fails to delight soul and sense. We can liken these suburban abodes to nothing but a string of precious gems flung around the neck of Old Boston. Nor is this all. Whoever cherishes the memory of brave deeds — and who does not? — will find here the arena in which the colonial stripling suddenly sprang erect, and planted a blow full in the front of the old insular gladiator, — a blow that made him reel with the shock to his very centre. It was here the Z HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. people of the " Old Thirteen " first acted together as one nation, and here the separate streams of their existence united in one mighty flood. The girdle is not the less interesting that it rests on the ramparts of the Eevolution. It is in a great measure true that what is nearest to us we know the least about, and that we ignorantly pass over scenes every day, not a whit less interesting than those by which we are attracted to countries beyond the seas. An invitation to a pilgrimage among the familiar objects which may be viewed from the city steeples, while it may not be comparable to a tour in the environs of London or of Paris, will not, our word for it, fail to supply us with materials for reflection and entertain- ment. Let us beguile the way with glances at the interior home- life of our English ancestors, whde inspecting the memorials they have left behind. Their habitations yet stand by the wayside, and if dumb to others, will not altogether refuse their secrets to such as seek them in the light of historic truth. We shall not fill these old halls with lamentations for a greatness that is departed never to return, but remember always that there is a living present into wliich our lives are framed, and by which the ci\ilization of what we may call the old regime may be tested. Where we have advanced, we need not fear the ordeal ; where we have not advanced, we need not fear to avow it. We suppose ourselves at the water-side, a wayfarer by the old bridge leading to Charlestown, with the tide rippling against the wooden piers beneath our feet, and the blue sky above call- ing us afield. The shores are bristling with masts which gleam like so many polished conductors and cast their long wavy shadows aslant the watery mirror. Behind these, houses rise, tier over tier, mass against mass, from which, as if dis- dainful of such company, the granite obelisk springs out, and higher yet, a landmark on the sea, a Pharos of liberty on the shore. The Charles, to which Longfellow has dedicated some charm- ing lines, though not actually seen by Smith, retained the name with which he christened it. It was a shrewd ^uess in the THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. bold navigator, that the numerous islands he saw in the bay indicated the estuary of a great river penetrating the interior. It is a curious feature of the map which Smith made of the coast of :N'ew England in 1614, that the names of Plymouth, Boston, Cambridge, and many other towns not settled until long afterwards, should be there laid down. Smith's map was the first on which the name of :N'ew England appeared. In the pavement of St. Sepulchre, London, is Smith's tomb- stone. The inscription, except the three Turk's heads, is totally effaced, but the church authorities have promised to have it renewed as given by Stow. The subject of bridging the river from the old ferry-way at Hudson's Point to the opposite shore — which is here of about the same breadth as the Thames at London Bridge — was agitated as early as 1712, or more than seventy years before its final accomplish- ment. In 1720 the attempt was renewed, but while the utihty of a bridge was conceded, it was not considered a practicable under- taking. After the Eevolution the captain john smith. project was again revived, and a man was found equal to the occasion. An ingenious shipwright, named Lemuel Cox, was then hving at Medford, who insisted that the enterprise was feasible. Some alleged that the channel of the river was too deep, that the ice would destroy the structure, and that it would obstruct navigation; while by far the greater number 4 HISTOEK; fields and mansions of MIDDLESEX. rejected the idea altogether as chimerical. But Cox persevered. He brought the influential and enterprising to his views ; a charter was obtained, and this energetic and skilful mechanic saw the bridge he had so dexterously planned in his brain be- come a reality. Captain John Stone, of Concord, Mass., was the architect of this bridge. His epitaph in the old burying- ground there says he was a man of good natural abilities, which seemed to be adorned with modern virtues and Christian graces. He died in 1791. The opening of the structure upon the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, and only eleven years after that event, attracted upwards of twenty thousand spectators. The day was ushered in by a discharge of thirteen cannon from the opposite heights of Breed's Hill, CharlestoAvn, and Copp's Hill, Boston, accompanied by repeated peals from the bells of Christ Church. At one o'clock, p. m., the proprietors assembled in the State House for the purpose of conducting the several branches of the Legislature over the bridge. The procession, which included not only the public officials, but almost every individual of prominence in the community, moved from State Street, amid a salute from the Castle, and upon its arrival at the bridge the attendant companies of artillery formed two lines to the right and left, through which the cortege passed on to the middle of the bridge, where it halted. The Presi- dent of the Corporation, Thomas Russell, then advanced alone, and directed Mv. Cox to fix the draw for the passage of the company, which was immediately done. The procession con- tinued its march to Breed's Hill, where two tables, each three hundred and twenty feet long, had been laid, at which eight hundred guests sat down and prolonged the festivities until evening. When built, this was the longest bridge in the world, and, except the abutments, was entirely of wood. Until West Boston Bridge was constructed, in 1793, it yielded a splendid return to the proprietors ; but the latter surpassed it not only in length, but in beauty of architecture, and, with the cause- way on the Cambridge side, formed a beautiful drive or prom- THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. 5 enade of about two miles in extent. It also lessened the dis- tance from Cambridge to Boston more than a mile. In 1828 Warren Bridge was opened, but not without serious opposition from the proprietors of the old avenue ; and the two bridges might not inaptly have served some native poet for a coUoquy as famous as that of the rival " Brigs of Ayr." " Nae langer thrifty citizens an' douce Meet owre a pint, or in the Council-house ; But staumrel, corky-headed, graceless Gentry, The herryment and ruin of the country ; Men tliree-parts made hy Tailors and by Barbers, Wha' waste your well hain'd gear on d— d neto Brigs and Harbours ! " The ferry, which was the original mode of transit between the two peninsulas, was established in 1635, and five years later was granted to Harvard College. To compensate for the loss of the income from this source when Charles Eiver Bridge was built, the proprietors were required to pay £200 per annum to the ' University, and in 1792 the same sum was imposed on the West Boston Bridge Corporation. Two handbills, each embellished with a rude woodcut of the bridge, were printed on the occasion of the opening, in 1786. One was from the " Charlestown Press " ; the other was printed by " E. Eussell, Boston, next door to Dr. Haskins', near Liberty Pole."* From the broadside (as it was then called), published at the request and for the benefit of the directors and friends of this " grand and almost unparalleled undertaking," we present the following extract : — " This elegant work was begun on the First of June 1785, (a day remarkable in the Annals of America as the Ports of Boston and Charlestown were unjustly shut up by an arbitrary British Admin- istration) and was finished on the seventeenth of the same month 1786, the ever memorable day on which was fought the famous and bloody Battle of Bunker-Hill, where was shewn the Valour of the undisciplined New England Militia under the magnanimous Warren who gloriously fell in his Country's Cause ! Blessed Be His Memory ! ! And All the People — Say Amen ! ! ! ! " * Ezekiel Russell's printing-office was at the head of Essex Street. 6 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. The ]3uilding committee were Hon. N'athaniel Gorham, Eichard Devens, David Wood, Jr., Captain Joseph Cordis, Andrew Symmes, Jr., and John Larkin. Lemuel Cox, the artisan, was born in Boston in 1736, and died in Charlestown in 1806. In 1787 he built the bridge to Maiden, which was finished in six months ; and in the fol- lowing year (1788), the Essex Bridge, at Salem, was con- structed by him. In 1789 he was living in Prince Street, in Boston, and styled himself a millwright. In 1790, accom- panied by a Mr. Thompson, Cox went to Ireland, where he was invited to estimate for the building of a bridge over the Foyle at Londonderry. His proposals being accepted, the two Americans purchased a sliip, which they loaded at Sheepscot, Maine, with lumber, and having secured about twenty of their countrymen, skilled in shaping timber, set sail for Ireland. The bridge, which connected the city and county, consisted of fifty-eight arches, all of American oak, and was completed in five months. The Foyle was here about nine hundred feet wide and forty feet deep at high water. What made Cox's achievement the more important was the fact that Milne, an English engineer, had surveyed the river and pronounced the scheme impracticable. Our pioneer in bridge-building on a great scale in America has received but scanty recompense at the hands of biographers. Dr. Ure has neither noticed his great works in Ireland nor in this country. Before he left Europe, Mr. Cox was applied to by the Corporation of London to take down Wren's monument, which was supposed to threaten a fall ; but, as they would not give him his price, he declined. Massachusetts granted him, in 1796, a thousand acres of land in Maine, for being the first inventor of a machine to cut card-wire, the first projector of a powder-mill in the State, and the first to suggest the employ- ment of prisoners on Castle Island to make nails. The rude woodcut which adorned the head of the broadside circulated at the opening of Charles Eiver Bridge was executed, as the printer says, by "that masterpiece of ingenuity, Mr. Lemuel Cox." It shows a detacliment of artillery with cannon ready THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX, 7 for firing, and a coach with four horses, and a footman behind, driving at full speed over the bridge. In 1786 no ceremony would have been considered complete without the aid of the Muses, and the Nine were energetically invoked in forty stanzas, of which we submit a fair specimen : — " The smiling morn now peeps in view, Bright with peculiar charms, See, Boston Nymphs and. Charlestown too Each linked arm in arm. 2. " I sing the day in which the BRIDGE Is finished and done, Boston and Charlestown lads rejoice, And fire your cannon guns. 3. " The BRIDGE is finished now I say, Each other bridge outvies. For London Bridge, compar'd with ours Appears in dim disguise. 23. " Now Boston, Charlestown nobly join And roast a fatted Ox On noted Bunker Hill combine. To toast our patriot COX. 38. '' May North and South and Charlestown all Agree with one consent, To love each one like Indian's rum. On publick good be sent. " Chelsea Bridge was built in 1803, and the direct avenue to Salem opened by means of a turnpike, by which the distance from Boston was greatly diminished. The bridge was to revert to the Commonwealth in seventy years. In 1643 the colony of Massachusetts Bay was divided into four shires, of which Middlesex, named after that county in Old England which includes London, was one. It is the most populous of all the counties of the Old Bay State, and em- braces within its limits the earliest battle-fields of the Eevolu- tion, the first seat of learning in the English colonies, and the manufactures which have made American industry known in every quarter of the globe. 8 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Charlestown, the mother of Boston, resembled in its super- ficial features its more powerful offspring. It was a peninsula, connected with the mainland by a narrow neck ; it had three principal hills also, but the mutations which have swept over the one have not left the other untouched. To remove a mountain is now only a question of time ; and were Mahomet to live again, he would see that his celebrated reply has be- come void of significance. Like Shawmut, Mishawum "* had its solitary settler in Thomas Walford, the sturdy smith, who was found living liere in 1628, Avhen some of Endicott's company made their way through the wilderness from Salem, The next year the settle- ment received some accessions, and was named Charles Towne by Governor Endicott, in honor of the reigning prince. Win- throp's company arrived at Charlestown in June and July, 1630 ; but, owing to the mortality that prevailed and the want of water, the settlers soon began to disperse, the larger part re- moving with the governor to Shawmut. A second dispersion took place on account of the destruction of the town during the battle of 1775, leaving nothing but the liills, the ancient burial-place, and a few old houses that escaped the conflagra- tion. After nearly two centuries and a half of separate existence, Charlestown has at length become part of Boston. The peo- ple simply ratified what History had already decreed. Now Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights lie, as they ought to lie, within a common municipal government. The old ferry, besides serving the primitive settlers, is de- serving of recognition as the place where the first exchange of prisoners took place after hostilities begun between America and Great Britain. This event occurred on the 6th of June following the battle of Lexington, and Avas conducted by Dr. Warren and General Putnam for the colony, and by Major Moncrieff on behalf of General Gage. The contending parties concerned themselves little at that time about what has since * Indian name of Charlestown. THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. 9 been known as ''belligerent rights," each being ready to get rid of some troublesome visitors by the easiest and most natural method. Warren and Putnam rode to the ferry in a phaeton, followed by a cavalcade of prisoners, some mounted and others riding in chaises. Arrived at the shore, the Doctor and ' Old Put' signalled the Lively, man-of-war, and Major Moncrieff come off as related. After the performance of their public business, the parties to the exchange adjourned to Mr. Foster's, and had what was then and since known as "a good time." A much worse fate hapjjened to the Bunker Hill prisoners, and it is quite evident that both parties looked upon the collision at Lexington as premature, — the King's commander with misgiving as to whether his conduct would be sustained in England ; the colonists as to whether their resistance had not closed the door against that reconciliation with the throne they professed so ardently to desire. The great square around which clustered the humble habita- tions of the settlers ; the "great house," inhabited for a time by the governor, and in Avhich the settlement of Boston was probably planned ; the thatched meeting-house, and even the first tavern of old Samuel Long, — afterwards the sign of the Two Cranes and situated on the City Hall site,* — were what met the eye of Josselyn as he ascended the beach into the market-place in 1638. He describes the rattlesnake he saw while walking out there, and his visit to Long's ordinary. Eventually, the town stretched itself along the street leading to the mainland. In these times of degeneracy, when man requires the most repressive measures to compel him to abstain from the vice of intemperance, we can but look back with longing eyes upon those halcyon days when a traveller entering a public inn was immediately followed by an officer, who, with the utmost sang froid, placed himself near the guest, and when, in his opinion, his charge had partaken of enough strong waters, by a wave of his hand forbade the host to fetch another stoup of liquor. What a companion for a midnight Avassail of good fellows ! With his * Also the site of the " Great House." 1* 10 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. gaze riveted upon the countenances of the revellers, he marks each stage of transition from sobriety to that point which we may call the perfect equipoise, where the law steps in. With a rap of his staff upon the floor, or a thwack of his fist on the table, he checks the song or silences the jest. We hardly know how to sufficiently admire such parental care in our forefathers ; we hesitate to compare it with the present system. The night-watch, too, was an institution. With their great- coats, dark-lanterns, and iron-shod staff's, they went their rounds to warn all wayfarers to their beds, admonish the loiterers who might chance to be abroad, or arrest evil-doers. Whether they were marshalled nightly by their officer we know not, but we doubt not they would have diligently executed their commission. Dogh. Well, you are to call at all the alehouses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed. 2 Wcdch. How if they will not ? Dogh. Wliy, let them alone till they are sober. The watchman had an ancient custom of crying " All 's well ! " and the hour of the night, as he went his rounds, at the same time striking his bill upon the pavement. This was to banish sleep altogether from the bed of sickness, or divide it into periods of semi-consciousness for the more robust. Well can we imagine the drowsy guardian, lurking in some dark passage or narrow lane, shouting with stentorian lungs Ids sleep-destroying watch-cry under the stars, and startHng a whole neighborhood from its slumbers. Like the Scot, he murdered sleep ; like him, he should have been condemned to sleep no more. Dr. Bentley, of Salem, who perhaps had a watchman nightly posted under his window, pertinently inquired through a news- paper if it would not be better to cry out when all was not well, and let well enough alone. Charlestown has given to the world some eminent public characters. Earliest among these is John Harvard, the patron of the college that bears his name. He was admitted a free- man " with promise of such accommodations as we best can," in 1637, but died the following year, leaving half his estate for THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX. 11 HARVARD 3 MONUMENT. the use of the infant school of learning. He also left his li- brary of more than three hundred volumes to the College, and has a simple granite shaft, erected to his memory on Burial Hill, in Charles- town, by the graduates of the University he aided to found. Edward Everett delivered the ad- dress on the oc- casion of the ded- ication. The eastern face of the monument, besides the name of John Harvard, bears the follow- ing inscription. " On the 26th of September, a. d. 1828, this stone was erected by the graduates of the University at Cambridge, in honor of its founder, who died at Charlestown on the 26th of September, 1638." The western front bears a Latin inscription, recognizing that one who had laid the corner-stone of letters in America should no longer be without a monument, however humble. This memorial, which was raised nearly two hundred years after the decease of Harvard, rests on a suppositive site, his burial-place having been forgotten or obliterated. Unfortunately, less is known of Harvard than of most of his contemporaries, but that little is treasured as a precious legacy to the Alumni of the University. The old graveyard, one of the most interesting in New England, as having received the ashes of many of Win- throp's band, suffered mutilation while the town was held by the British in 1775 - 6. It is stated that the gravestones were in some cases used by the soldiers for thresholds to their barracks. 12 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. THE NIGHT SURPRISE AT DONCASTER. Charlestown may also lay claim to having given two brave soldiers to Old Noll's army when that liard-hitting Puritan was cracking the crowns of loyal Scot, Briton, or Celt, and sending the ringleted cavaliers over-seas to escape his long arm. Principal of these was William Eainsborrow who lived here in 1639, and was, with Eobert Sedgwick and Israel Stough- ton, a member of the Honorable Artillery Company of Boston. Eainsborrow had risen to be colonel of a regiment in the Parliamentary army, in which Stoughton (of Dorchester) was lieutenant-colonel, Xehemiah Bourne, a Boston shipwright, major, and John Leverett, afterwards governor, a captain; AVilliam Hudson, supposed to be of Boston, also, was ensign. In the year 1648, the Yorkshire royalists, who had been living in quiet since the first war, were again excited by intel- ligence of Duke Hamilton's intended invasion. A plan was laid and successfully carried out to sm-prise Pomfret Castle, (sometimes called Pontefract) the greatest and strongest castle in all England, and then held by Colonel Cotterel as governor for the Parliament. The castle was soon beseiged by Sir Ed- ward Ehodes and Sir Henry Cholmondly with five thousand regular troops, but the royal garrison made good their conquest. It being hkely to prove a tedious affair. General Eains- borrow was sent from London by the Parliament to put a speedy end to it. He was esteemed a general of great skill and courage, exceedingly zealous in the Protector's service, with a reputation gained both by land and sea, — he having been, for a time, Admiral of Cromwell's fleet. Eainsborrow pitched his headquarters, for the present, at Doncaster, twelve miles from Pomfret, with twelve hundred foot and two regi- ments of horse. The castle garrison having learned of Hamilton's defeat at Preston, and that Su* Marmaduke Langdale, who commanded the English in that battle, was a prisoner, formed the bold design of seizing General Eainsborrow in his camp, and hold- ing him a hostage for Sir Marmaduke. The design seeme- 188 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. stance a revolution. JStrong domestic ties bound liim to his allegiance. He was of the Church of England too, and his associates were cast in the same tory moidd with himself. He had been a merchant in Boston in 1764, and the agent of Sir Charles Frankland when that gentleman went abroad. He kept his coach and his liveried servants for state occasions, and the indispensable four-wheeled chaise universally affected by the gentry of his day for more ordinary use. If he was not a Scotsman by descent, we have not read aright the meaning of the thistle, which Imnan loved to see around him. The house had a plain outside, unostentatious, but speak- ing eloquently of solid comfort and good cheer within. It was of wood, of three stories, with a pitched roof From his veranda Inman had an unobstructed outlook over the mead- ows, the salt marshes, and across the bay, to the town of Boston. What really claim our admiration about this estate were the trees by which it was glorified, and of which a few noble elms have been spared. Approaching such a house, as it lay environed by shrubbery and screened from the noonday sun by its giant guardians, with the tame pigeons perched upon the parapet and the domestic fowls cackling a noisy re- frain in the barn-yard, you would have said, " Here is good old-fashioned thrift and hospitality ; let us enter," and you would not have done ill to let instant execution follow the happy thought. Besides his tory neighbors — and at the time of which we write what we now call Old Cambridge was parcelled out among a dozen of these — Inman was a good deal visited by the loyal faction of the town. The officers of his Majesty's army and navy liked to ride out to Inman's to dine or sup, and one of them lost his heart there. John Linzee, captain of H. IM. ship Beaver, met with Sukey Inman (Ralph's eldest daughter) in some royalist coterie, — as like as not at the house of her bosom friend, Lucy Flucker, — and found his heart pierced through and through by her bright glances. He struck his flag, and, being incapable of resistance, became Sukey's lawful prize. He came with Dal- PUTNAM'S HEADQUARTERS. 189 r\Tiiple, Montague, and his brother officers ostensibly to sip Ealph's mulled port or Vidania, but really, as we may believe, to see the daughter of the house. For some unknown cause the father did not favor Linzee's suit. There was an aunt whom Sukey visited in town, and to whose house the gallant captain had the open sesame, but who manoeuvred, as only aunts in 1772 (and they have not forgot their cunning) knew how, to keep the lovers apart. But John Linzee was no faint-heart, and he married Sukey Inman. George Inman, her brother, entered the British army. Linzee commanded the Falcon at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he did us all the mischief he could, and figured else- where on our coasts. In 1789 he happened again to cast anchor in Boston harbor, and opened his batteries this time with a peaceful salute to the famous stars and stripes flying from the Castle. It is well known that Prescott, the historian, married a granddaughter of Captain Linzee. The interior of Inman's house possessed no striking features. It was roomy, but so low-studded that you could easily reach the ceilings with your hand when standing upright. The deep fireplaces, capacious cupboards, and secret closets were all there. Our last visit to the mansion was to find it divided asunder, and being rolled away to another part of the town, where we have no wish to follow. It was not a pleasant sight to see this old house thus mutilated, with its halls agape and its cosey bedchambers literally turned out of doors, — a veri- table wreck ashore. Inman was arrested in 1776. He had been of the king's council and an addresser of Hutchinson. He became a refugee in Boston, and his mansion passed into the custody of the Pro- vincial Congress, who assigned it to General Putnam. Putnam, as we remember, commanded the centre of the American position, comprising the works and camps in Cam- bridge. The commission of major-general was then no sine- cure, and we may opine that Old Put had his hands busily employed. Those long summer days of 1775 were full of care and toil, but the summer evenings were not less glorious than 190 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. now, and the General must have often sat on the refugee's lawn, watching the camp-fires of the investing army, or tracing in the heavens the course of some fiery ambassador from the hostile shore. One day while Putnam was on Prospect Hill he summoned all his captains to headquarters. It was stated to them that a hazardous service was contemplated, for which one of their number was desired to volunteer. A candidate stepped for- ward, eager to signalize himself. A draft of six men from each company was then made. At the appointed time the chosen band appeared before the General's quarters, fully armed and equipped. Old Put complimented their appearance and com- mended their spirit. He then ordered every man to lay aside his arms for an axe, and directed their march to a neighboring swamp to cut fascines. When Putnam was with Amherst in Canada, that general, to his great aimoyance, found that the French had a vessel of twelve guns stationed on a lake he meant to pass over with his army. While pondering upon the unexpected dilemma he was accosted by Putnam with the remark, " General, that ship must be taken." " ^y/' says Amherst, " I 'd give the world she were taken." " I '11 take her," says Old Put. " Give me some wedges, a beetle, and a few men of my own choice." Amherst, though unable to see how the ship was to be taken by such means, willingly complied. At night Putnam took a boat, and, gaining the ship's stern unperceived, with a few quick blows drove his wedges in such a manner as to disable the rudder. In the morning the vessel, being unmanageable, came ashore, and was taken. With the single exception of A\^ashington there is not a name on the roll of the Eevolution more honored in the popu- lar heart than that of Putnam. He Avas emphatically a man of action and of purpose. At what time he received his famous sobriquet we are unable to say, but he was Old Put at Cam- bridge, and will be to posterity. We can imagine the young fledglings of the army calling the then gray-haired veteran by this familiar nickname, but when PUTNAM'S HEADQUARTERS. 191 it comes to the dignified commander-in-chief, it shows us not only that he had a grim sense of the humorous, but that he was capable of relaxing a little from his habitual dignity of thought and expression. " I suppose," says Joseph Eeed, in a letter to Washington, — "I suppose ' Old Put ' was to command the de- tachment intended for Boston on the 5th instant, as I do not know of any officer but himself who could have been depended on for so hazardous a service." And the General replies : " The four thousand men destined for Boston on the 5 th, if the minis- teriaUsts had attempted our works at Dorchester or the lines at Eoxbury, were to have been headed by Old Put." He had nearly attained threescore when the war broke out, but the fires which a life filled with extraordinary adventures had not dimmed still burned brightly in the old man's breast. Only think of a sexagenarian so stirred at the scent of battle as to mount his horse and gallop a hundred and fifty miles to the scene of conflict. Whether we remember him in the wolfs lair, at the Indian torture, or fighting for his country, we recognize a spirit which knew not fear and never blenched at danger. If the General sometimes swore big oaths, — and we are not disposed to dispute it, — they were, in a measure, inocuous ; such, for example, as Uncle Toby used at the bedside of the dying lieutenant. Your camp is a sad leveller, and though the Continental officers could not have had a more correct example than their illustrious chief, yet it was much the fashion among gentlemen of quality of that day, and especially such as em- braced the military profession, to indulge themselves in a little proftmity. Say what we will, our Washingtons and our Have- locks are the rara aves of the camp. We have history for it that " our army swore terribly in Flanders." We believe the Revolution furnishes a similar example ; and we fear the Great Pebellion tells the same story. It was perhaps to remedy this tendency, and that the spiritual wants of the soldiery might not suffer, that a prayer was composed by Rev. Abiel Leonard, chaplain to General Put- nam's regiment, and printed by the Messrs. Hall in Harvard 192 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. College in 1775. Putnam was no courtier, but brusque, hearty, and honest. The words attributed to the Moor might have been his own : — " Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the set phrase of peace ; For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used Their dearest action in the tented field. " Putnam's summer costume was a waistcoat without sleeves for his upper garment. Across his brawny shoulders was tlirown a broad leathern belt, from which depended a hanger, and thus he appeared as he bestrode his horse among the camps at Cambridge. Those sneering Marylanders scouted this carelessness in the bluff old captain's attire, and said he was much better to head a band of sicklemen or ditchers than musketeers. The day following the battle of Bunker Hill, a young lady Avho had been assisting Dr. Eustis in the care of our wounded wished to send a letter to her parents in Boston. Her heart was full of anguish at the death of Warren, and her pen un- skilled in cold set phrase. The officer at the lines to whom she handed her missive, in order that it might go in with the first flag, returned it, saying, " It is too d— d saucy." The lady went to General Ward, who advised her to soften the expres- sions a little. General Putnam, who was sitting by, read the letter attentively, and exclaimed, " It shall go in if I send it at the mouth of a cannon ! " He demanded a pass for it, and the fair writer received an answer from her friends within forty- eight hours. Putnam's old sign of General Wolfe, which he displayed when a tavern-keeper at Brooklyn, Connecticut, is still pre- served. Before we depart from Cambridgeport the reader will permit us a pilgrimage to the homes of Margaret Fuller and Washing- ton Allston. Margaret was born in a house now standing in Cherry Street, on the corner of Eaton Street, with three splen- did elms in front, planted by her father on her natal day. The PUTNAM S HEADQUARTERS. 193 large square building, placed on a brick basement, is removed about twenty feet back from the street. It is of wood, of three stories, has a veranda at the front reached by a flight of steps, and a large L, and now appears to be inhabited by several families. Miss Fuller went to Edward Dickinson's school, situ- ated in Main Street, nearly opposite Inman, where liev. S. K. Lothrop and 0. W. Holmes were her classmates. Her father, Timothy Fuller, and herself are still remembered by the elder people wending their way on a Sabbath morn to the old brick church of Mr. Gamiett. Allston lived in a house at the corner of Magazine and xUiburn Streets. His studio was nearly opposite his dwelling, in the rear of the Baptist church, in a building erected for him. It was confidently asserted by Americans in England, that had Allston remained there he might have reached a high position in the Royal Academy ; but he was devotedly attached to his country and to a choice circle of higlily prized friends at home. Allston realized whatever prices he chose to ask for his pic- tures. Stuart only demanded 1 150 for a kit-kat portrait and $ 100 for a bust, but Allston's prices were much higher. Being asked by a lady if he did not require rest after finishing a work, he replied : " Xo, I only require a change. After I finish a portrait I paint a landscape, and then a portrait again." He dehghted in his art. He was received in Boston on his return from England with every mark of affection and respect, and his society was courted in the most intelligent and cultivated circles. Even the young ladies, the belles of the period, appreciated the polish and charm of his manners and address, and were well pleased when he made choice of one of them as a partner in a cotillon, then the fashionable dance at evening parties. Besides his immediate and gifted family connections, Allston was much attached to Isaac P. Davis and Loammi Baldwin, the eminent engineer. The painting of " Elijah in the Wilder- ness " remained at the house of the former in Boston until it was purchased by Labouchiere, who saw it there. It lias been 9 M 194 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. repurchased by Mrs. S. Hooper, and is now in the Athenoeum Gallery. No distinguished stranger went away from Boston without seeing Allston ; among others he was visited by Mrs. Jameson, who was taken by the artist to his studio, where he exhibited to her several of his unfinished works and sketches. It was a most interesting interview. Allston's " Jeremiah," an immense canvas, with figures larger than hfe, was ordered by Miss Gibbs. " Saul and the Witch of Endor " and '^ A Bookseller and a Poet " were painted for Hon. T. H. Perkins. '' Miiiam on the Shore of the Eed Sea," a magnificent work, with figures nearly life-size, was executed for Hon. David Sears. The " Angel appearing to Peter in Prison " was painted for Dr. Hooper. A landscape and exqui- site ideal portrait, finished for Hon. Jonathan Phillips, were destroyed in the great fire of 1872. " Rosalie," an ideal por- trait, was painted for Hon. N. Appleton. " The Valentine," another ideal subject, became the property of Professor Ticknor. " Amy Robsart " was done for John A. Lowell, Esq. Besides these the painter executed works for Hon. Jonathan Mason, N. Amory, F. C. Gray, Richard Sullivan, Loammi Baldmn, — for whom the exquisite " Florimel " of Spenser was painted, — Theodore Lyman, Samuel A. Eliot, Warren Dutton, and others. This catalogue will serve to show who were Allston's patrons. For each subject the price varied from seven to fifteen hundred dollars. About 1830 a number of Boston gentlemen advanced the artist $ 10,000 for his unfinished " Belshazzar." A DAY AT HARVARD. 195 CHAPTEE IX. A DAY AT HARVARD. " Ye fields of Cambridge, oiir dear Cambridge, say Have you not seen us walking every day ? Was there a tree about which did not know The love betwixt us two ? " CAMBRIDGE seems to realize the injunction of a sagacious statesman of antiquity : " If you would have your city loved by its citizens, you must make it lovely." The location of this settlement was, according to Governor Dudley, due to apprehensions of the French, which caused the colonists to seek an inland situation. They decided to call it Newtown, but in 1638 the name was changed in honor of the old English university town. Cambridge was made a port of entry in 1805, hence Cambridgeport. It became a city in 1846. The broad, level plain where Winthrop, Dudley, Bradstreet, and the rest bivouacked in the midst of the stately forest in 1631, and looked upon it as " That wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot " ; where they posted their trusty servants, with hghted match, at the verge of the encampment, and the moon's rays glittered on steel cap and corselet ; where they nightly folded their herds within the chain of sentinels, until they had hedged themselves round about with palisades ; where they repeated their simple prayers and sung their evening hymn ; where learning erected her first temple in the wilderness ; and where a host of armed men sprung forth, Minerva-like, ready for action, — the abode of the Muses, the domain of Letters, — this is our present walk among the habitations of the living and the dead. 196 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Old William Wood, author of the first printed account of Massachusetts, says : — " Newtown was first mtended for a city, but upon more serious consideration, it was thought not so fit, being too far from the sea ; being the greatest inconvenience it hath. This is one of the neatest and best compacted towns in New England, having many fair struc- tures, ^\dth many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants most of them are very rich.'' Old Cambridge a hundred years after its settlement was, as we have mentioned, the peculiar abode of a dozen wealthy and aristocratic families. Their possessions were as extensive as their purses were long and their loyalty approved. They were of the English Church, were intermarried, and had every tie — social position, blood, politics, religion, and we know not what else — to bind them together in a distinct community. The old Puritan stock had mostly dispersed. Many had passed into Connecticut, others into Boston ; and still others, finding their ancient limits much too narrow, had, in the language of that day, " sat down " in what are now Arlington and Lexington, and were long known distinctively as the " farmers." These latter, with the fragment still adhering to the skirts of the an- cient village, had their meeting-house and the College, which they still kept free from heresy, — not, however, without con- tinual watchfulness, nor without attempts on the part of the Episcopalians to obtain a foothold. It was believed before the Eevolution that the Ministry seriously contemplated the firmer establishment of the Church of England by creating bishoprics in the colonies, — a measure which was warmly opposed by the Congregational clergy in and out of the pulpit. Tithes and ceremonials were the bugbears used to stimulate the opposition and arouse the prejudices of the populace. Controversy ran high, and caricatures appeared, in one of which the expected bishop is seen taking refuge on board a departing vessel, while a mob on the wharf is pushing the bark from shore and pelting the unfortunate ecclesiastic with treatises of national law. The large square wooden house which stands on Main A DAY AT HARVAKD. 197 Street, directly opposite Gore HaU, was built by the Rev. East Apthorp, D. D., son of Charles Apthorp, an eminent Boston merchant of Welsh descent. It was probably erected in 1761, the year in which Dr. Apthorp was settled in Cambridge, and was regarded, on account of its elegance and proximity to the University, with peculiar distrust by Mayhew and his orthodox contemporaries. It was thought that if the ministerial plan was carried out Dr. Apthorp had an eye to the Episcopate, and his mansion was alluded to as " the palace of one of the humble successors of the Apostles." So uncomfortable did his antag- onists render his ministry, that Dr. Apthorp gave up his charge and removed to England in the latter part of 1764. The pleasant old house seems next to have been occupied by John Borland, a merchant of the capital, who abandoned it on the breaking out of hostilities, and took refuge in Boston, where he died the same year (1775) from the effects of a fall. Under the new order of things the mansion became the headquarters of the Connecticut troops, with Old Put at theh- head, on their arrival at Cambridge, and Putnam probably re- mained there until after the battle of Bunker Hill. ^ It con- tinued a barrack, occupied by three companies, until finaUy cleared and taken possession of by the Committee of Safety, the then executive authority of the province. Its next inhabitant was "John Burgoyne, Esquire, lieu- tenant-general of his Majesty's armies in America, colonel of the queen's regiment of Hght dragoons, governor of Fort WiUiam in Xorth Britain, one of the representatives of the Commons of Great Britain, and commanding an army and fleet on an expedition from Canada," etc., etc., etc. Such is a faith- ful enumeration of the titles of this illustrious Gascon as pre- fixed to his bombastic proclamation, and which must have left the herald breathless long ere he arrived at the " Whereas." For a pithy history of the campaign which led to Burgoyne's enforced residence here, commend us to the poet : — " Burgoyne gaed up, like spur an' whip, Till Fraser brave did fa', man ; Then lost his way ae misty day, In Saratoya shaw, man." 198 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. The house fronts towards Mount Auburn Street, and over- looked the river when Cambridge was yet a conservative, old- fashioned country town. That street was then the high-road, which wound around the foot of the garden, making a sharp curve to the north where it is now joined by Harvard Street. It was, therefore, no lack of respect to the Eev. Edward Holy- oke, the inliabitant of the somewhat less pretending dwelling of the College presidents, that caused Dr. Apthorp to turn his back in his direction. The true front bears a strong family resemblance to the Vassall-LongfeUow mansion, the design of which was perhaps followed by the architect of this. The wooden balustrade which surmounted, and at the same time relieved, the bare outUne of the roof was swept away in the great September gale of 1815. A third story, which makes the house look like an ill-assorted pair joined in matrimonial bands for life, is said to be the work of Mr. Borland, who required additional space for his household slaves. The line of the old cornice shows where the roof was separated from the original structure. The posi- tion of the outbuildings, now huddled together in close con- tact with the house, has been changed by the stress of those circumstances which have from time to time denuded the estate of portions of its ancient belongings. The clergyman's grounds extended to Holyoke Street on the one hand, and for an equal distance on the other, and were entered by the carriage-drive from the side of Harvard Street. As it now stands, about equidistant from the avenues in front and rear, it seems a patrician of the old regime, withdraw- ing itself instinctively from contact with its upstart neighbors. The house which John Adams's apprehensions converted into a Lambeth Palace was, happily for its occupant, never the seat of an Episcopal see, or it might have shared the fate with which Wat Tyler's bands visited the ancient castellated residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury. We found the interior of the house worthy of inspection. There is a broad, generous hall, with its staircase railed in with the curiously wrought balusters, which the taste of the times A DAY AT HARVARD. 199 required to be different in form and design. A handsome re- ception-room opens at the left, a library at the right. The for- mer was the state apartment, and a truly elegant one. The ceilings are high, and the wainscots, panels, and mouldings were enriched with carvings. The fireplace has still the blue Dutch tiles with their Scripture allegories, and the ornamental fire-back is in its place. Directly above is the state chamber, a luxurious apartment within and without. We say without, for we looked down upon the gardens, with their box-bordered walks and their un- folding beauties of leaf and flower, — the fruit-trees dressed in bridal blossoms, the Pyrus Japonica in its gorgeous crimson bloom, mth white-starred Sjyircea and Deutzia gracilis en- shrouded in their fragrant mists. " A brave old house ! a garden full of bees, Large dropping poppies, and queen hollyhocks, With butterflies for crowns, — tree peonies, And pinks and goldilocks." In this bedchamber, which wooed the slumbers of the sybarite Burgoyne, the walls are formed in panels, ornamented with paper representing fruit, landscapes, ruins, etc., — a species of decoration both rare and costly at the period when the house was built. Mr. Jonathan Simpson, Jr., who married a daughter of Mr. Borland, became the proprietor after the old war. Mrs. Manning, the present occupant, has lived to see many changes from her venerable roof, and the prediction that her prospect would never be impaired answered by the overtopping walls of contiguous buildings. We crave the reader's indulgence while we return for a moment upon our own footsteps to Dana Hill, upon wliich we have hitherto traced the defensive lines. The family for whom the eminence is named have been distinguished in law, politics, and letters, — from Richard Dana, of pre-Revolutionary fame, to his descendants of to-day. The Dana mansion, surrounded by beautiful grounds, for- merly stood some two hundred feet back from the present Main Street, and between Ellery and Dana Streets. It Avas a 200 HISTOKIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. wooden house, of two stories, not unlike in general appearance that of Mr. Longfellow, but was many years since destroyed by fire. Judge Francis Dana, a law-student with Trowbridge, and who was succeeded as chief justice of Massachusetts by The- ophilus Parsons, filled many positions of high trust and respon- sibihty both at home and abroad. The name of Ellery Street happily recalls that of the family of Mrs. Judge Dana. With the career of Richard H. Dana, poet and essayist, son of the judge, and with that of the younger Richard H, and Edmund his brother, grandsons of the jurist, the public are familiar. When WiUiam Ellery Channing was an undergraduate he resided in the family mansion of the Danas, the wife of the chief justice being his maternal aunt. It is said that, although half a mile distant from college, he was always punctual at prayers, which were then at six o'clock through the whole year. Between Arrow and Mount Auburn Streets was the estate of David Phips, the sheriff of Middlesex, colonel of the gover- nor's troop and son of Lieutenant-Governor Spencer Phips. A proscribed royalist, his house, some time a hospital, was afterwards the residence of WiUiam Winthrop, and is now standing in fair preservation. The GOOKIN. '^ ^ estate is more interesting to the antiquary as that of Major-General Daniel Gookin, Indian superintendent in the time of Eliot, and one of the licensers of the printing- press in 1662, — an office supposed not to have been too arduous in his time, and not considered compatible with hberty in our own. What this old censor would have said to many of the so-called respectable publications of to-day is not a matter of doubtful conjecture. It was under Gookin's roof, and perhaps on this very spot, that Generals Goffe and WhaUey were shel- tered until the news of the Restoration and Act of Indemnity caused them to seek another asylum. A DAY AT HARVARD. 201 The large, square wooden house at the corner of Harvard and Quincy Streets, and which stands upon the extreme hmit of the College grounds in this direction, was the hrst observatory at Harvard. It is at present the residence of Eev. Dr. Pea- body, chaplain of the College. William Cranch Bond, subse- quently professor of astronomy, was a skilful optician, who had, from innate love of the science of the heavens, established a small observatory of his own in Dorchester, where he pur- sued his investigations. He was invited to Harvard, and, mth the aid of such instruments as could be obtained, founded in this house what has since grown to be a credit to the Univer- sity and to America. He had the assistance of some of the professors, and of President Hill and others. Triangular points were established in connection with this position at Milton Hill and at Bunker Hill. It was the intention to have erected an observatory on Milton Hill, but difficulties of a financial char- acter interposed, and President Quincy purchased Craigie Hill, the present excellent location. We are now trenching upon classic ground. We have passed the sites of the old parsonage of the first parish, built in 1670, and in which all the ministers, from Mr. Mitchell to Dr. Holmes, resided, taken down in 1843 ; the traditional Fellows' Orchard, on a corner of which now stands Gore HaU; the homes of Stephen SewaU, first Hancock Professor, and of the Professors Wigglesworth, long since demolished or removed, to find all these former landmarks included within the College grounds. If the reader obeys our instincts he will not fail to turn aside and wend his way to the Library, erected in 1839-42, through the munificence of Governor Gore. Witliin the hall are the busts of many of "■ Those dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns. " The cabinets of precious manuscripts, some of them going before the art of printing, and almost putting it to blush with their beautifully illuminated pages ; the alcoves, inscribed with 9* 202 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. the benefactors' names, and garnered with the thoughts and deeds of centuries, — each a storehouse of many busy brains, and each contributing to the aggregate of human knowledge ; — all these seemed like so many ladened hives of human patience, industry, and, perchance, of ill-requited toil. GORE HALL, 1873. Here is your dainty fellow in rich binding, glittering in gold title, and swelling with importance, — a parvenu among books. You see it is but little consulted, — the verdict of condemna- tion. Here is a Body of Divinity, once belonging to Samuel Parris, first minister of Danvers, in whose family witchcraft had its beginning in 1692. His name is on the fly-leaf, the ink scarcely faded, while his bones have long since moiddered. Truly, we apprehend such bulky bodies must have sadly lacked soul ! Many of Hollis's books are on the shelves, beautifully bound, and stamped with the owner's opinions of their merits by placing the owl, his family emblem, upside down when he wished to express his disapproval. Somehow we cannot take the book of an author, known A DAY AT HARVARD. 203 or unknown, from its accustomed place without becoming as deeply contemplative as was ever Hamlet over the skull of Yorick, or without thinking that each sentence may have been distilled from an overworked, thought-compressed brain. But if one laborer faints and falls out of the ranks, twenty arise to take his place, and still the delvers in the mine follow the alluring vein, and still the warfare against ignorance goes on. The library was originally deposited in Old Harvard, which was destroyed by fire on the 24th January, 1764, and with it the College hbrary, consisting of about five thousand volumes of printed books and many invaluable manuscripts. The philosophical apparatus was also lost. This was a severe and irreparable blow to the College, for the books given by Jolin Harvard, the founder. Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir John Maynard, Dr. Lightfoot, Dr. Gale, Bishop Berkely, and the first Thomas HoUis, together with the Greek and Hebrew types belonging to the College, perished in the flames. Only a single volume of the donation of Harvard remains from the fire. Its title is "Douname's Christian Warfare." A picture of the library as it existed before this accident is given by a visitor to the College in 1750 : — " The library is very large and well stored with books but much abused by frequent use. The repository of curiosities which was not over well stock'd. Saw 2 Human Skellitons a peice Neigro's hide tan'd &c. Homes and bones of land and sea animals, fishes, skins of diff'erent animals stuff'd &c. The skull of a Famous Indian Warrior, where was also the moddeU of the Boston Man of Warr of 40 Gunns compleatly rig'd &c." We can only indulge in vain regrets that so many valuable collections relative to New England history have been swept away. The fire which destroyed Boston Town House in 1747; the mobs which pillaged the house of Governor Hutchin- son, and also the Admiralty archives ; the mutilation of the invaluable Prince library stored in the tower of the Old South, of the destruction of which Dr. Belknap related that he was a witness, and which was used from day to day to kindle 204 HISTOKIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. the fires of the vandal soldiery ; the plunder of the Court of Common Pleas by the same lawless soldiery, — all have added to the havoc among our early chronicles, which the conflagra- tion at Harvard assisted to make a lamentably conspicuous funeral-pyre to learning. After the fire the library was renewed by contributions, among the most valuable of wliich was the gift of a consider- able part of Governor Bernard's private library. John Han- cock was the donor, in 1772, of a large number of books, and also of a carpet for the floor and paper for the walls. The library and apparatus were packed up on the day before the battle of Bunker Hill, under the care of Samuel Phillips, assisted by Thompson, afterwards Count Rumford, and re- moved, first to Andover, and a part subsequently to Concord, to which place the government and many of the students had retired. Many of the books, however, were probably scattered in private hands, as we find President Langdon advertising for the return of the apparatus and library to Mr. Winthrop, the librarian, early in 1778. Here are works on which the writers have expended a lifetime of j)atient research, and which are highly prized by scholars ; but their laborious composition has failed to meet such reward as would keep even the body and soul of an author together. And here are yet others that have struck the fickle chord of transient popular favor, requiting their makers with golden showers, and perhaps advancement to high places of lionor. In our own day it is literary buffoonery that pays the best. Once master the secret how " to set the table in a roar," be it never so wisely, and we warrant you success. Perhaps it is because, as a people, we laugh too little that we are willmg to pay so well for a little of the scanty wit and a good deal of the chalk and sawdust of the circus. Among other treasures which the library contains is a copy of Eliot's Indian Bible, the first Bible printed on the continent of America, perhaps in the Indian College, certainly on Samuel Green's Cambridge press, though where this press was set up diligent inquiry has failed to enlighten us. In 1720, as w(^ A DAY AT HAEVARD. 205 gather from an English authority, the press was kept either in Harvard or Stoughton, the only two buildings then existing. Last, but not least, we have chanced on Father Rale's Dic- tionary of the Abenaquis, captured, with the priest's strong- box, at ^orridgewock, in 1721. Sebastian Rale exercised great influence over the eastern Indians, among whom he re- sided after his coming to Canada in 1689. This influence, which was exerted on behalf of the French, by exciting the Indians to commit depredations upon the frontier settlements of the English, caused an attempt to be made to seize Rale at his house at Norridgewock by a party led by Colonel West- brook. The priest escaped, but his strong-box was taken, and in it were found the letters of M. de Yaudreuil, Governor of Canada, which exhibited Rale in the light of a political agent. This attempt was retaliated by the Indians, and Lovewell's War ensued. In 1724 Xorridgewock was surprised and Rale killed, refusing, it is alleged, the quarter offered him. Rale was slain near a cross which he had erected near the middle of the village, and with him some Indians who endeavored to defend him. The father went boldly forth to meet his enemies, and died, like a martyr, at the foot of the cross. He was scalped, his chapel destroyed, and the plate and furniture of the altar, \Yith the devotional flag, brought away as trophies. The strong- box passed into the possession of the family of Colonel West- brook, the commander of the Eastern forces. The story is harrowing, but true. The guardian of this treasury of thought, John Langdon Sibley, has presided over it since 1856, with previous service as assistant for many years after his graduation in 1825. Him- self a scholar, and an author wdiose energies have been chiefly exerted in behalf of his Alma Mater, his long experience has made of him a living encyclopedia, with brain arranged in pigeon-holes and alcoves, and where the information accumu- lated for so many studious years is always at command, — not pressed and laid away to moulder in its living receptacle. The idea of a secure depository for the College library origi- nated in an attempt, in April, 1829, to blow up Harvard Hall. 206 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Leaving tlie castellated granite Library, the first attempt at architectural display these precincts knew, we pass on to the ancient dwelling-place of the governors of the College, known as the President's House. It is a venerable gambrel-roofed structure, of no mean con- sideration in its day, and certainly an object remarkable enough for its antiquated appearance, standing, as it does, solitary and alone, of all its companions that once stretched along the lane. A tall elm at its back, another at its front, droop over it lov- ingly and tenderly. These are all that remain of a number planted by President AVillard, the exigencies of improvement having cut off a portion of the grounds in front, now turned into the street. The house is of two stories, with a chimney at either end, and a straggling collection of buildings at its back, which the necessities of various occupants have called into being. It was literally the habitation of the presidents of the College for a hundred and twenty years, beginning with Benjamin Wads- worth, minister of the First Church in Boston, and son of the old Indian fighter, for whom it was erected. The entry from the President's MS. book, in the College Library, which follows, fixes the date with precision : — " The President's House to dwell in was raised May 24, 1726. No life was lost nor person hurt in raising it ; thanks be to God for his preserving goodness. In y" evening those who raised y' House, had a supper in y« Hall ; after wch we sang y* first stave or staff in y 127 Psalm. " 27 Oct. 1726. This night some of our family lodged at y« New House built for y' President; Nov. 4 at night was y' first time y* my wife and I lodg'd there. The house was not half finished within." Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, daughter of President Quincy, who resided in this house for sixteen years, has lately given the annexed description of the old mansion. * She says : — " My sketch represents the house as Washington saw it, except that there were only two windows on each side the porch in the * Charles Deane, in Mass. Hist. Society's Proceedings. A DAY AT HARVARD. 207 lowest story. The enlargement of the dining and drawing rooms, which added a third, was subsequently made under the direction of Treasurer Storer, as his daughter informed me. The room in the rear of the drawing-room, on the right hand as you enter, was the President's study, until the presidency of Webber, when the end of the house was added, with a kitchen and chamber and dressing-room, very commodiously arranged, I was told, under the direction of Mrs. Webber. The brick building w^as built at the same time for the President's study and Freshman's room beneath it, and for the preservation of the college manuscripts. I went over the house with my father and mother and President Kirkland, soon after his acces- sion. As there were no regular records kept during his presidency of eighteen years, he did not add much to the manuscripts. We then little imagined that we should be the next occupants of the mansion, should repair and arrange the house under Mrs. Quincy's direction, and reside in it sixteen very happy years. I regret its present dilapidated state, and rejoice, in view of ' the new departure,' as it is termed, that I sketched the antiquities and old mansions of Old Cambridge." The brick building alluded to, and which now joins the ex- treme rear additions, formerly stood on the left-hand side of the mansion as the spectator faces it, and communicated mth it. This part was built under the supervision of President Webber, and was, in 1871, removed to its present situation. It is now the office of the College Steward. Probably no private mansion in America has seen so many illustrious personages under its roof-tree as the President's House. Besides its occu- pancy by Wadsworth, Holyoke, Locke, Langdon, Willard, Webber, Kirkland, Quincy, and Everett, the royal governors have assembled there on successive anniver- saries, and no distinguished traveller passed its door without paying his respects to the administration for the time being. Xo doubt the eccentric Dr. Witherspoon broke willard. bread at the table of Holyoke when he visited Boston in the memorable year 1768. 208 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. The office of president, though for a long time, either through policy or parsimony, a dependent one, was always an eminent mark of distinction, and its possessor was regarded — outside the College walls at least, if not always within — with venera- tion and respect. The earlier incumbents were men who had acquired great influence for their piety and learning as teachers of the people, whose spiritual and temporal wants were in those primitive days equally under guardianship. Chauncy, who is styled in the " Magnalia " the Gadmius Americana, and who rose at four in the morning, summer and winter; In- crease Mather, whose dynasty embraced a period of great importance in the political history of the Colony ; Wadsworth, in whose time the Church of England made its CHAUNCY. ineffectual effort to obtain an entrance into the government ; Holyoke, whose term is memorable as the longest of the series ; and Langdon, who left his office at the dictation of a cabal of students, — all are honored names, and part of the history of their times. Upon the coming of General Washington to Cambridge the Provincial Congress assigned the President's House for his use, not because it was the best by many the place could afford, but probably because it was the only one then unoccupied by the provincial forces or their military adjuncts. The house not being in readiness when the General arrived, on the 2d of July, 1775, he availed himself, temporarily, of another situation, and within a week indicated his preference for the Vassall House, which he had not passed down the old Watertown road with- out observing. There is no conclusive evidence that the Gen- eral ever occupied the President's House, and the absence of any tradition involves it in doubt. Washington made a passing visit to Cambridge in 1789, and was welcomed on behalf of the governors of the College by President Willard. He was then accompanied by Tobias Lear, who had owed his confidential position as Washington's secre- tary to the good offices of Willard. A DAY AT HARVARD. 209 With President Willard departed the day of big wigs at the President's House. He always appeared abroad in the fidl-bot- tomed white periwig sanctioned by the custom of the times ; this was exchanged in the study for a velvet cap, such as adorn the heads of some of the portraits in Old Massachusetts HaU. It is related that when Congress was sitting in New York, during Washington's term. President Willard visited that place. It chanced that he wore his full-bottomed wig, which attracted so great a crowd when he walked about as to occasion on his part apprehensions of ill usage from the mob. With what satis- faction he must have shaken off the dust of that barbarous city, where the sight of his periwig aroused a curiosity akin to that exhibited by the Goths when they beheld the long white beards of the Eoman senators. In WiUard's time a club of gentlemen were accustomed to assemble at his house on certain evenings, of which, besides the President and resident professors. Judge Dana, Governor Gerry, Mr. Craigie, Mr. Gannett, and others, were members. Bachelors were excluded, which caused Judge Winthrop, the former libra- rian and one of the tabooed, to say they met to talk over their grievances. President Kirkland, an elegant scholar and most fascinating companion, was noted for his pithy sayings as well as for his wit. On one occasion an ambitious young fellow, who had a pretty good opinion of himself, having asked the Doctor at what age a man would be justified in becoming an author, replied, "Wait until you are forty ; after that you wiU never print anything." To a student who observed in his presence that dress of itself was of little consequence, he made this shrewd remark : " There are many things which there is no particular merit in doing, but which there is positive demerit in leaving undone." The rare abilities of Dr. Kirkland make it a never-failing re- gret that he was by nature indolent, and indisposed to call into action the full powers of his mind, or to bring forward his reserves of information except in briUiant conversation. He talked apparently without effort, and could unite the merest 210 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. minutes of a discourse with little or no preparation and with marvellous address. President Kirkland is described as of middling stature, portly, with fair complexion, a round and comely face, with blue eyes, a small mouth, regular and beautiful teeth, and a countenance noble, frank, and intelligent. Josiah Quincy, after an active political life, became President in 1849. During his occupancy of the chair Gore Hall was built, and the security of the library, which had given him much solicitude, was assured against ordinary contingencies. The sixteen years of Mr. Quincy's administration were a period of great usefulness and prosperity to the College. In 1840 the President published his History of Harvard University, — a work of much value, in which he was assisted by his daughter, Eliza, a lady whose culture and tastes eminently qualified her for the work. Mr. Everett's excessive sensitiveness contributed to make his contact with so many young and turbulent spirits at times dis- quieting. His elegant, classic diction and superb manner have gained for him an enviable name as an orator. He would never, if jDossible, speak extemporaneously, but carefully prepared and committed his addresses. His mind was quick to grasp any circumstance and turn it to account ; the simile of a drop of water, used by him with much force, occurred to him, it is said, through the dropping from a leak over his head while perform- ing his morning ablutions. Similarly, while once on his way to deliver an address at Williams College, he happened to pass the night at Stockbridge, where a gentleman exhibited to him the watch of Baron Dieskau. The next day this little relic furnished the theme for a beautiful passage, into which the de- feat of Dieskau and the death of Colonel Williams, on the same field, were effectively interwoven. Eev. Sydney Smith, with whom Mr. Everett passed some time in Somersetshire, thus spoke of him : — " He made upon us the same impression he appears to make uni- versally in this country. We thought him (a character which the English always receive with affectionate regard) an amiable Ameri- I A DAY AT HARVARD. 211 can, republican without rudeness, and accomplished without ostenta- tion. ' If I had known that gentleman five years ago (said one of my guests), I should have been deep in the American funds ; and, as it is, I think at times that I see nineteen or twenty shillings in the pound in his face.' " Increase Mather was the first person to receive the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Harvard. When he became President he refused to accede to the requirement that the President should reside at Cambridge, and finally resigned rather than comply with it. Vice-President Willard is the only person who has administered the affairs of the College under that title, which was assumed to evade the rule of residence, and to enable him to continue his functions as pastor of the Old South, Boston. It was Increase Mather, then (1700) President, who ordered Eobert Calef's " WT.cked book" — a satire on witchcraft, en- titled " More Wonders of the Invisible World," and printed in London — burnt in the College yard, and the members of the reverend Doctor's church [The Old North) published a defence of their pastors. Increase and Cotton Mather, called " Truth will come off ConqiierorT This publication proved even a greater satire than Calef's, as the authors were erelong but too glad to disavow all sympathy with the wretched superstition. The President's chair, an ancient relic, used in the College, from an indefinite time, for conferring degrees, is preserved in Gore Hall. Eeport represents it to have been brought to the College during the presidency of Holyoke as the gift of Eev. Ebenezer TureU. It has a triangular seat, and belongs to the earliest specimens of our ancestors' domestic furniture. In Dunster Street we salute the name of the first President of the College, whose habitation, it is conjectured, stood near. It was at first called Water Street, and in it were situated the first church erected in Newtown, which stood on the west side, a little south of the intersection of Mount Auburn Street, upon land formerly owned by Thaddeus M. Harris, and also the house of Thomas Dudley, the deputy of Governor Winthrop, whose extravagance in ornamentiim his habitation witli a wain- 212 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. scot made of clapboards the latter reproved. At the foot of Water Street was the old ferry by which communication was had with the opposite shore. The old meeting-house stood till about 1650, when the town took order for building a new church on the Watch House Hill, of which presently. A vote of the town in the year mentioned directs the repair of the old house " with a 4 square roofe and covered with shingle." The new house was to be forty foot square, covered in the same manner as was directed for the old, the repair of which was discontinued, and the land belonging to it sold in 1651. Dudley, the tough old soldier of Henri Quatre, with whom he had fought at the siege of Amiens in 1597, with a captain's commission from Queen Bess, finally settled in Eoxbury, and left a name that has been honored in his descendants. His house stood on the west side of Water Street, near its southern termination at Marsh Lane. Governor Belcher says : " It was wrote of him, * Here lies Thomas Dudley that trusty old stud, A bargain 's a bargain and must be made good.' " A brief glance at the topography of our surroundings will enable the reader to understand in what way the Englishmen laid out what they intended for their capital town. They first reserved a square for a market-place, after the manner of the old English towns. This is the present Market Square, upon which the College grounds abut, and in its midst was perhaps placed a central milliarium, which marked the home points of the converging roads. The plain, as level as a calm sea, ad- mitted the laying out of the town in squares, the streets cross- ing each other at right angles. Between the market-place and the river were erected the principal houses of the settlement, and some of the oldest now standing in Cambridge will be found in this locality. We have noticed the ferry. About 1660 this was super- seded by "the great bridge," rebuilt in 1690, and standing at the Revolution in its present situation at the foot of Brighton A DAY AT HARVARD. 213 Street. Over this bridge came Earl Percy with his reinforce- ment on that eventful morning in April which dissolved the British empire in America. The people, having notice of his approach, removed the " leaves " or flooring of the bridge, but, as they were not conveyed to any distance, they were soon found and replaced by the Earl's troops. A draw was made in the bridge at "Washington's request in 1775. The street leading from the market-place to the bridge was the principal in the town for a long period, it being in the direct route of travel from Boston via Eoxbury and Little Cam- bridge (Brighton) to what is now Lexington, and from the capital again by Charlestown Ferry to the Colleges, and thence by the bridge to BrookUne and the southward. It was intended to make Newtown a fortified place, and a levy was made on the several towns for this purpose. Rev. Abiel Holmes, writing in 1800, says : — " This fortification was actually made, and the fosse which was then dug around the town is, in some places, visible to this day. It commenced at Brick Wharf (originally called Windmill Hill) and ran along the northern side of the present Common in Cambridge, and through what was then a thicket, but now constitutes a part of the cultivated groimds of Mr. Nathaniel Jarvis, beyond which it cannot be distinctly traced. It enclosed above one thousand acres." The road to "VVatertown, now Brattle Street, and formerly the great highway to the south and west, left the market-place, as now, by the rear of the English Church, but communicated also more directly with Charlestown road by the north side of the Common. It was by this road that Washington arrived in Cambridge and the army marched to New York. By it, also, Burgoyne's troops reached their designated camps. The reader will go over it with us hereafter. All these particulars are deemed essential to a comprehension of the mihtary oper- ations of the siege of Boston when Cambridge was an intrenched camp. Not far from the Square, and on the west side of Brighton Street, is the site of Ebenezer Bradish's tavern, of repute in Revolutionary times. Its situation near the bridge was com- 214 HISTOKIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. patible with the convenience of travellers ; nor was it too re- mote from the College halls for the requirements of the students when Latin classics became too dry, and Euchd too dull for human endurance. Many, we will venture to say, were the plump, big-bellied Dutch bottles smuggled from mine host's into Old Harvard, Massachusetts, or Stoughton. Bradish kept a livery too, which was no doubt well patronized by the col- legians, though here he encountered some disgrace by letting his horses to David Phips to carry off the province cannon at Gage's behest. Bradish seems, however, to have been well affected to the patriot cause. His inn was long the only one in the town, and had the honor of entertaining Generals Bur- goyne. Philips, and the principal British officers on their first arrival in Cambridge. This tavern, also later known as Porter's, was for a time the annual resort of the Senior Class of the Col- lege on Class Day, for a dinner and final leave-taking of all academical exercises. Bradish's was the rendezvous of Eufus Putnam's regiment in 1777. The first publican in Old Cambridge was Andrew Belcher, an ancestor of the governor of that name, who was licensed in 1652 "to sell beare and bread, for entertainment of strangers and the good of the toAvne." It is at least a coincidence that a Belcher still dispenses rather more dainty viands on Harvard Square. It is a relief to find that in the year 1750 there were some convivial and even thirsty souls about, as Ave learn from the journal of a rollicking sea-captain, Avho Avas having his ship repaired at Boston while he indulged in a run on shore : — " Being iioav ready to Sale I determined to pay my Avay in time, which I accordingly did at M" Graces at the Eequest of M' Heyleg- her and the Other Gentlemen Gave them a Good Supper Avith Wine and Arack Punch Galore, AA^here Exceeding Merry Drinking Toasts Singing Roaring &c. untill Morning Avhen Could Scarce see One another being Blinded by the Wine Arack &c. Ave where in all ab* 20 in compy," The tavern bills of the General Court in 1768-69 Avould astonish the ascetics of Beacon Hill. We remark a great dis- A DAY AT HARVAKD. 215 parity between the quantity of fluids and edibles. In a docu- ment now before us eiglity dinners are flanked with one hun- dred and thirty-six bowls of punch, twenty-one bottles of sherry, and brandy at discretion. Truly ! we are tempted to exclaim with Prince Hal on reading the bill of Falstaff''s supper, — " O monstrous ! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack," What, then, would Prince Hal have said to a bill of your modern alderman 1 Returning into the Square, we continue our peregrinations around the College enclosure. As you turn towards the Com- mon, in approaching from Harvard Street, you pass over the spot whereon the second edifice of the first church was erected. A little elevation which formerly existed here is supposed to have been the Watch-house Hill, before mentioned, and later called Meeting-house Hill. In 1706 the third church was erected on this ground, and in 1756 the fourth house was raised, somewhat nearer Dane Hall. This church was taken down in 1833, when the site became the property of the College. In the meeting-house which stood here the First Provincial Congress held their session in 1774, after their adjournment from Salem and Concord. The Congress first met in the old Court House on the 17th of October, but immediately adjourned to the meeting-house, of which Rev. Xathaniel Appleton was then pastor, and who officiated as their chaplain. This was the period of the Port Act, and the crisis of the country. The Congress was earnestly engaged in measures for the relief of the distressed and embargoed to"\vn of Boston, the formation of an army, a civil administration, and other revolutionary meas- ures. Here was made the organization of the celebrated minute- men, the appointment of Jedediah Preble, Artemas Ward, and Seth Pomeroy as general officers ; and of tlie famous Revolution- ary committee of nine, of which Hancock, Warren, Church, Devens, White, Palmer, Quincy, Watson, and Orne were mem- bers. This body, called the Committee of Safety, wielded the 216 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. executive power, and in the recess of Congress were vested with almost dictatorial authority. The members of the Second Con- tinental Congress were also chosen at this time. Space does not permit us to linger among those giajits who welded the Old Thirteen together with the fire of their elo- quence. One incident must have created no little sensation in an assembly of which probably a majority were slaveholders. A letter was brought into the Congress directed to Eev. Dr. Appleton, which was read. It represented the propriety while Congress was engaged in efforts to free themselves and the people from slavery, that it should also take into consideration the state and circumstances of the negro slaves in the province. After some debate the question " was allowed to subside." " A ! freedome is a nobill thing! Freedome mayse man to liaifi' liking ! Freedome all solace to man giffis ; He levys at ese that frely levys ! A noble hart may haiflf nane ese, Na ellys nocht that may him plese, Gyff fredome fail}i;he ; for fre liking Is yearnj-t onr all other thing Na he, that ay hase levyt fre, May nocht knaw well the propryte. The angyr, na the wretchyt dome, That is cowplyt to foul thryldome." In the olden time people were summoned to church by beat of drum, — until a bell was procured, a harsh and discordant appeal for the assembly of a peaceful congregation, — but those were the days of the church militant. On the contrary, our grandsires, whose ears were not attuned to the sound, could as little endure the roll of British drums near their sanctuaries on a Sabbath morn, as could the poet the clangor of the bell of Tron-Kirk which he so rudely apostrophized : — " Oh ! were I provost o' the town, I swear by a' the powers aboon, I 'd bring ye wi' a reesle down ; Nor should you think (So sair I 'd crack and clour your crown) Again to clink." A DAY AT HARVARD. 217 The old Court House, which has been named in connection with the Henley trial, stood at first bodily within the Square, but was later removed to the site of the present Lyceum building, and is even now existing in its rear, where it is utilized for workshops. It was built in 1756, and continued to be used by the courts until the proprietors of Lechmere Point obtained their removal to that location by the offer of a large bonus. The old wooden jail stood at the southwest corner of the Square, and was but little used for the detention of crimi- nals after the erection of the stone jail at Concord in 1789. The Court House witnessed the trials of many notable causes, and furnished the law-students of the University with a real theatre, of which they were in the habit of availing them- selves. As late as 1665 declarations and summonses were published by sound of trumpet. The crier opened the court in the king's name, and the judges and barristers in scarlet robes, gown, and wig, inspired the spectator with a wholesome sense of the majesty of the law. The usual form of a document was ''To all Xtian people Greeting." Under the first charter, or patent as it was usually called, the Governor and Assistants were the sole depositaries of all power, whether legislative, executive, or judicial. When the patent was silent the Scriptures were consulted as the proper guide. The ministers and elders were, in all new exigencies, the ex- pounders of the law, which was frequently made for the occa- sion and apphed without hesitation. The cause of complaint was briefly stated, and there were no pleadings. Hutchinson says, that for more than the first ten years the parties spoke for themselves, sometimes assisted, if the cause was weighty, by a 'patron, or man of superior abilities, but without fee or reward. The jury — and this marks the simplicity of the times — were allowed by law, if not satisfied with the opinion of the court, "^o consult any hy-stander.''^ Such were the humble beginnings of our courts of law. The following is extracted from the early laws of Massachu- setts : — 10 218 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. " Everie marryed woeman shall be free from bodilie correction or stripes by her husband, unlesse it be in his owne defence upon her assalt. If there be any just cause of correction complaint shall be made to Authoritie assembled in some court, from which onely she shall receive it." The common law of England authorized the infliction of chastisement on a wife with a reasonable instrument. It is related that Judge Buller, charging a jury in sucli a case, said, "Without undertaking to define exactly what a reasonable instrument is, I hold, gentlemen of the jury, that a stick no bigger than my thumb comes clearly within that description." It is further reported that a committee of ladies waited on him the next day, to beg that they might be favored with the exact dimensions of his lordship's thumb. Dane Hall, which bears the name of that eminent jurist and statesman through whose bounty it arose, was erected in 1832 and enlarged in 1845. The south foundation-wall of Dane is the same as the north waU of the old meeting-house, so that Law and Divinity rest here upon a common base. The fu-st law-professorship was established through the be- quest of Isaac Eoyall, the Medford loyalist, who gave by his will more than two thousand acres of land in the towns of Granby and Royalston for this purpose. In 1815 Hon. Isaac Parker, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Avas appointed first professor, and in 1817, at his suggestion, a law school was established. Judge Parker's lectures were delivered in what was then known as the Philosophy Chamber, in Harvard Hall. Both the Law and Divinity Schools were established during Dr. Kirkland's presidency. It is worthy of mention that the first doctorate of laws was conferred on Washington for his expulsion of the British from Boston. Nathan Dane, LL. D., a native of Ipswich and graduate of Harvard, is justly remembered as the framer, while in Congress, of the celebrated " Ordinance of 1787 " for the government of the territory northwest of the Ohio, by which slavery was excluded from that immense region. In 1829 the Law School was reorganized through the liberality of Mr. Dane, who had A DAY AT HARVARD. 219 offered a competent sum for a professorship, with the right of nominating the first incumbent. The person who had been selected for the occupancy of the chair was Joseph Story, whose fame as a jurist had culminated on the Supreme Bench of the United States. Judge Story remained in the Dane Professorship until his death in 1845, a period of sixteen years. It is believed that his life was shortened by his prodigious intellectual labors and the demands made upon him for various kinds of literary work. As a writer he belonged to the intense school, if such a char- acterization be admissible, and this mental tension appeared in the quick changes of liis countenance and in his nervous movements as weU as in the rapidity of his pen. A great talker, he never lacked interested auditors ; for his was a mind of colossal stamp, and he never wanted language to give utter- ance to his thoughts. The first settlers in Massachusetts Bay did not recognize the law of England any fui^ther than it suited their interests. The common law does not appear, says Sullivan, to have been re- garded under the old patent, nor for many years after the Charter of 1692. In 1647 the first importation of law books was made ; it comprised, — 2 copies of Sir Edward Coke on Littleton, 2 " of the Book of Entries, 2 " of Sir Edward Coke on Magna Charta, 2 " of the New Terms of the Law, 2 •' of Dalton's Justice of the Peace, 2 " of Sir Edward Coke's Eeports. This was four years after the division of the Colony of Massa- chusetts Bay into four shires. Norfolk included that part of the present county of Essex north of the Merrimac, and also the settled part of New Hampshire. There were attorneys here about ten years after the settle- ment. Lechford, who came over in 1631, and returned to England in 1641, where he published a pamphlet called " Plain Dealing," says that " every church member was a bishop, and, 220 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. not inclining to become one himself, he could not be admitted a freeman among them ; that the General Court and Quarter Sessions exercised all the powers of King's Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, High Commission, Star Chamber, and of all the other courts of England." For some offence Lechford, de- barred from pleading and deprived of practice, returned to England, to bear witness against the colonial magistrates. But from other authority than Lechford's, we know that the dis- tinction between freeman and non-freeman, members and non- members, appeared as striking to new-comers as that between Cavaher and Eoundhead in Old England. In 1687, almost sixty years from the first settlement of this country, there were but two attorneys in Massachusetts. The noted crown agent, Eandolph, wrote to a friend in England, in that year, as follows : — " I have wrote you the want we have of two or three honest at- torneijs, if there be any such thing in Nature. We have but two ; one is Mr. West's creature, — came with him from New York, and drives all before him. He takes extravagant fees, and for want of more, the country cannot avoid coming to him." The other appears to have been George Earewell, who said in open court in Charlestown that all causes must be brought to Boston, because there were not honest men enough in Middlesex to make a jury to serve their turns. Our two oldest Universities have never displayed a political bias like Oxford and Cambridge in Old England, where the dis- tinction between Whig and Tory was so marked that when George I. gave his library to Cambridge, the following epigram appeared : — " King George observing with judicious eyes The state of both his Universities, To Oxford sent a troop of horse ; for why ? That learned body wanted loyalty. To Cambridge books he sent, as well disceraing How much that loyal body wanted learning." A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 221 CHAPTEE X. A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. '' It wiU be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words." — Jack Cade. THE Marquis of Wellesley is accredited with having said to an American, " Establishing a seminary in j^ew Eng- land at so early a period of time hastened your revolution half a century." This was a shrewd observation, and aptly supplements the forecast of the commissioners of Charles 11. , who said, in their report, made about 166G : — " It may be feared this collidg may afford as many scismaticks to the Church, and the Corporation as many rebells to the King, as for- merly they have done if not timely prevented." The earliest contemporary account of the founding of the College is found in a tract entitled " Xew England's Eirst Fruits," dated at " Boston in Xew England, September 26, 1642," and published in London in 1643. This is, in point of time, nearly coeval with the University, and is as follows : — " After God had carried us safe to New England, and wee had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli-hood, rear'd convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civill govern- ment ; One of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity ; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as wee were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work ; it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, then liv- ing amongst us) to give the one haK of his estate (it being in all about 1700 Z.) towards the erecting of aColledge and all his Library; After him another gave 300 1, others after them cast in more, and the publique hand of the State added the rest : The Colledge was by 222 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge, (a place very pleas- ant and accommodate) and is called (according to the name of its first founder) Harvard Colledge." The account, with its quaint and pertinent title, gives also the first description of the College itself : — " The edifice is very faire and comely within and without, having in it a spacious hall ; where they daily meet at commons, lectures and Exercises ; and a large library with some bookes to it, the gifts of diverse of our friends, their chambers and studies also fitted for, and possessed by the students, and all other roomes of office neces- sary and convenient with all needful offices thereto belonging : And by the side of the Colledge a faire Grammar Schoole for the train- ing up of young scholars and fitting them for Academical learning, that still as they are judged ripe, they may be received into the Colledge of this schoole : Master Corlet is the Mr. who hath very well approved himself for his abilities, dexterity, and painfulnesse in teaching and education of the youths under him." Edward Johnson's account of ^ew England, which appeared in 1654, mentions the single College building, which was of wood, as the commissioners before quoted say : — " At Cambridge, they have a wooden Collidg, and in the yard a brick pile of two Cages for the Indians, where the Commissioners saw but one. They said they had three or more at scool." The Indian seminary was built by the corporation in Eng- land, and in 1665 contained eight pupils, one of whom had been admitted into the College. By this time as many as a hundred preachers, physicians, and others had been educated and sent forth by the College. There existed formerly, in lieu of the low railing at present dividing the College grounds from the highway, a close fence, with an entrance opening upon the old College yard between Harvard and Massachusetts. This was superseded in time by a more ornamental structure, with as many as four entrances, flanked by tall gateposts. The present streets, then but lanes, were enlarged at the expense of the College territory, thus re- ducing its area very materially. I A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 223 The first building, or Old Harvard, was rebuilt of brick in 1672 by the contributions of the Colony. Of the £1890 raised for this purpose, Boston gave £ 800. The old structures ranging along the street which separates the College enclosure from the Common are, with the exception of Stoughton, on their original sites, and were, when erected, fronting the principal highway through the toAvn. Harvard, which is upon its old ground, was the nucleus around which the newer halls ranged themselves. Stoughton, second in the order of time, was built in 1698, and Massachusetts in 1720. These are the three edifices shown in an illustration, of which the original was published by AVilliam Price at the " King's Head and Looking Glass," in Cornhill (Boston), and is dedi- cated to Lieutenant-Governor Spencer Phips. It is entitled " A Prospect of the Colledges in Cambridge in New England." The first Stoughton was placed a httle in the rear of, and at right angles with, Harvard and Massachusetts, fronting the open space between, so as to form three sides of a quadrangle. It stood nearly on a line with HoUis, was of brick, and had the name of Governor Stoughton, the founder, inscribed upon it. The foundation-stone was laid May 9, 1698, but, after standing nearly a century, having gone to irremediable decay, it was taken down in 1781. A facsimile of this edifice appears in the background of Governor Stoughton's portrait, in the gallery in Massachusetts HaU. As has been remarked, there is a probabiHty that the College press was kept in either Harvard or Stoughton as early as 1720, and the fact that the types belonging to the CoUege were destroyed by the fire which consumed Harvard in 1764 gives color to the conjecture that the press was there. In May, 1775, the Provincial Congress, having taken possession of the College, assigned a chamber in Stoughton to Samuel and Ebenezer Hall, who printed the " 'New England Chronicle and Essex Gazette " there until the removal of the army from Cam- bridge. From this press, says a contemporary, " issued streams of intelligence, and those patriotic songs and tracts which so pre-eminently animated the defenders of American liberty." 224 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. John Fox, who was born at Boston, in England, in 1517, thus speaks of the art of printing : — " What man soever was the instrument [whereby this invention was made] without all doubt, God himself was the ordainer and dis- poser thereof, no otherwise than he was of the gift of tongues, and that for a similar purpose." In 1639 the first printing-press erected in New England was set up at Cambridge by Stephen Daye, at the charge of Eev. Joseph Glover, who not only brought over the printer, but everything necessary to the typographic art. " The first thing printed was ' The Freeman's Oath,' the next an Almanac made for New England by Mr. Pierce, mariner ; the next was the Psalms newly turned into metre." * John Day, who lived in Elizabeth's time at Aldersgate, London, was a famous printer, who is understood to have introduced the italic characters and the first font of Saxon types into our typography. Samuel Green, into whose possession the press very early came, and who is usually considered the first printer in America, was an inhabitant of Cambridge in 1639, and pursued his call- ing here for more than forty years, when he removed to Boston. Green printed the "Cambridge Platform" in 1649 ; the Laws in 1660; and the "Psalter," "Eliot's Catechism," "Baxter's Call," and the Bible in the Indian language in 1685. Daye's press, or some relics of it, are said to have been in existence as late as 1809 at Windsor, Vt. All these early publications are of great rarity. Massachusetts, which is the first of the old halls reached in coming from the Square, is the oldest building now standing. It is but one remove from, and is the oldest existing specimen in Massachusetts of, our earliest types of architecture as applied to public edifices. Like Harvard, it presents its end to the street, and faces upon what was the College green a century and a half gone by, — perhaps the very place where Robert Calef 's wicked book was, by an edict which smacks strongly of the Inquisition, burnt by order of Increase Mather. * Winthrop's Journal, A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 225 The building, with its high gambrel roof, dormer windows, and wooden balustrade surmounting all, has a quaint and de- cidedly picturesque appearance. Though nominally of three stories, it shows five tiers of windows as we look at it, above which the parapet terminates in two tall chimneys. Between each range of windows is a belt giving an appearance of strength to the structure. On the summit of the western gable was a clock affixed to an ornamental wooden tablet, which is still in its place, although the clock has long since disappeared. Mas- sachusetts contained thirty-two rooms and sixty-four studies, until its dilapidated condition compelled the removal of all the interior woodwork, when it was converted into a gallery for the reception of the portraits belonging to the College. Many of these portraits are originals of Smibert, Copley, and Stuart, which makes the collection one of rare value and ex- cellence. Of these, two of the most characteristic are of old Thomas Hancock, the merchant prince, and founder of the pro- fessorship of that name, and of Mcholas Boylston, another eminent benefactor, — both Copleys. Hancock, who was the governor's uncle, and who became very rich through his con- tracts for supplying Loudon's and Amherst's armies, kept a bookseller's shop at the " Bible and Three Crowns " in Ann Street, Boston, as early as 1726. Copley has delineated him in a suit of black velvet, white silk stockings, and shoes with gold buckles. One of the hands is gloved, while the other, uncovered, shows the beautiful mem- ber which plays so important a part in all of that painter's works. The old gentleman's clothes fit as if he had been melt- ed down and poured into them, and his ruffles, big-wig, cocked hat, and gold-headed cane supply materials for completing an attire suited to the dignity of a nabob of 1756. The artist gives his subject a double chin, shrewd, smallish eyes, and a general expression of complacency and good-nature. What we remark about Copley is his ability to paint a close-shaven face on which the beard may still be traced, with wonderful faith- fulness to natui'e ; every one of his portraits has a character of its own. 10* o 226 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Boylston is represented in a neglige costume, with a dressing- gown of blue damask, the usual purple-velvet cap on his head, and his feet encased in sHppers. This portrait was painted at the request of the corporation in partial acknowledgment of the bequest of £ 1500 lawful money by Boylston, to found a profes- sorship of oratory and rhetoric, of which John Quincy Adams was the first professor. The portrait ordered by the College was a copy from the original by Copley, and was directed to be hung in the Philosophy Room beside those of Hancock and HoUis. The portraits of Thomas Hollis, one of a family celebrated for its many benefactions to the College, and of President Holyoke, are also by Copley ; that of John Lovell, the tory schoolmaster of Boston, is a Smibert. The full length of John Adams ex- hibits a figure full of animation, attired in an elegant suit of brown velvet, with dress sword and short curled wig. As a whole, it may fairly claim to take rank with the superb portrait of Colonel Josiah Quincy in the possession of his descendants, and overshadows the full length of J. Q. Adams by Stuart, hanging near it. There is also a portrait of Count Rumford. All these portraits are admirable studies of the costumes of their time, and as such have an interest rivalling their purely artistic merits. One of the irreparable consequences of the great fire in Boston, of November, 1872, was the loss of a score or more of Copley's portraits which were stored within the burnt district. In 1806 the College corporation ha\dng represented to the General Court that the proceeds of the lottery granted for the use of the University by an act passed June 14, 1794, were in- sufficient, and that great and expensive repairs were necessary to be made on Massachusetts Hall, they were empowered by an act passed March 1 4, to raise $ 30,000 by lottery, to erect the " new building called Stoughton Hall," and for the purpose of repairing Massachusetts, under direction of the President and Fellows, who were to appoint agents and publish the schemes in the papers. A lottery had been authorized as early as 1765 to raise A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 227 and still another funds for the "new building" (Harvard Hall), another in 1794^ — in which the College itself drew the principal prize (No. 18,547) of ten thousand ILLIARD & METC?l£Ii ^ the simimer of 1775, they >^ ^ were made available for every i ^ variety of military offices as ^ rX well as for a certain number j^ of soldiers. In June Captain Smith Avas ordered to quar- ter in No. 6, and Captain Sephens in No. 2 of Massa- chusetts, while Mr. Adams, a sutler, was assigned to No. 17. The commissariat was in the College yard, where the details from all the posts came to draw rations. Nearly two thousand men were sheltered in the five College buildings standing in the winter of 1775-76, of which Harvard received 640, Stoughton 240, and the chapel 160. Harvard Hall, as it now appears, was rebuilt in 1765. The fire which destroyed its predecessor was supposed to have originated under the hearth of the library, where a fire had been kept for the use of the General Court, which was then 228 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. sitting there on account of the prevalence of small-pox in Bos- ton. Two days after this accident the General Court passed a resolve to rebuild Harvard Hall. The new edifice contained a chapel, dining-hall, library, museum, philosophy chamber, and an apartment for the philosopliical apparatus. Several interesting incidents are associated with the rebuild- ing of Harvard. When the Eev. George Whitefield was first in I^ew England he was engaged in an acrimonious controversy with the President and some of the instructors of the College. Upon learning of the loss the seminary had sustained, White- field, putting all animosities aside, solicited contributions in England and Scotland with generous results. On the occasion of the last visit of this celebrated preacher to America every attention was paid him by the President and Fellows of the University. Dr. Appleton, who had moderately opposed Whitefield's teachings, invited him to preach in his pulpit, and the scene is said to have been one of great interest. Harvard Hall was planned by Governor Bernard, — a great friend of the College, whatever else his demerits, — and while it was building he would not suffer the least departure from his plan. It is said he could repeat the whole of Shakespeare. That he was somewhat sensitive to the many lampoons levelled at him may be inferred from his complaint to the council of a piece in the Boston Gazette, which ended with these lines : — " And if such men are by God appointed, The devil may be the Lord's anointed," Shortly after the arrival of the troops from England in 1768, which was one of Bernard's measures, the portrait of the Gov- ernor which hung in Harvard Hall was found with a piece cut out of the breast, exactly describing a heart. The mutilated picture disappeared and could never be traced. After Bernard's return home it was reported, and currently believed, that he was driven out of the Smyrna Coffee House in London, by General Oglethorpe, who told him he was a dirty, factious scoundrel, who smelled cursed strong of the han«aiian. The General ordered the Governor to leave the A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 229 room as one unworthy to mix with gentlemen, but offered to give him the satisfaction of following him to the door had he anything to reply. The Governor, according to the account, left the house hke a guilty coward. Harvard, the building of which Thomas Dawes suj^erintended, stands on a foundation of Braintree stone, above which is a course of dressed red sandstone with a belt of the same material between the stories. It is composed of a central building with a pediment at either front, to which are joined two wings of equal height and length, each having a pediment at the end. There are but two stories, the lower tier of windows being arched, and the whole structure surmounted by a cupola. It was in the Philosophy Eoom of Harvard that Washington was received in 1789, and after breakfasting inspected the library, museum, &c. The three buildings which we have described are those seen by Captain Goelet in 1750.* He says : — " After dinner Mr. Jacob Wendell, Abraham Wendell, and seK took horse and went to see Cambridge, which is a neat, pleasant village, and consists of about an hundred houses and three Col- leges, which are a plain old fabrick of no manner of architect, and the present much out of repair, is situated on one side of the To%\Tie and forms a large Square ; its apartments are pretty large. Drank a glass wine with the collegians, returned and stopt at Eichardson's where bought some fowles and came home in the evening which we spent at Wetherhead's with sundry gentlemen." Hollis and the second Stoughton Hall, both standing to the north of Harvard, are in the same style of architecture. The first, named for Thomas Hollis, was begun in 1762 and com- pleted in 1763. It was set on fire when Old Harvard was consumed, and was struck by lightning in 1768. Thomas Dawes was the architect, Stoughton was built during the years 1804, 1805. They have each four stories, and are exceed- ingly plain " old fabrics " of red brick. Standing in front of the interval between these is Holden Chapel, built in 1745 at * N. E. Hist, and Gen. Register. 230 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. the cost of the widow and daughters of Samuel Holden, one of the directors of the Bank of England. It was first used for the College devotions, subsequently for the American courts-martial, and afterwards for anatomical lectures and dissections. It be- came in 1800 devoted to lecture and recitation rooms for the professors and tutors. Holworthy Hall, which stands at right angles with Stoughton, was erected in 1812. Besides the five brick edifices standing in 1800, was also what was then called the College House, a three-story wooden building, standing without the CoUege yard, containing twelve rooms with studies. It was originally built in 1770 for a private dwelling, and pur- chased soon after by the College corporation. University Hall, built in 1812-13 of Chelmsford granite, is jDlaced upon the site of the old Bog Pond and within the limits of the Wiggles- worth Ox Pasture. This building had once a narrow escape from being blown up by the students, the explosion being heard at a great distance. A little southeast of HoUis is the supposed site of the Indian college. It does not fall within our purpose to recite the history of the more modern buildings grouped around the interior quad- rangle, with its magnificent elms and shady walks ; its elegant and lofty dormitories, and its classic lore. Our business is with the old fabrics, the ancient pastimes and antiquated cus- toms of former generations of Senior and Junior, Sophomore and Preshman. It was a warm spring afternoon when we stood within the quadrangle and slaked our thirst at the wooden pump. A longing to throw one's self upon the grass under one of those inviting trees was rudely repeUed by the painted admonition, met at every turn, to " Keep off the Grass." The government does not waste words ; it orders, and its regulations assimilate to those of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Never- theless, a few benches would not seem out of place here, when we recall how the sages of Greece instructed their disciples as they walked or while seated under some shady bough, as Soc- rates is described by Plato. Looking up at the open windows of the dormitories, we saw ■>/" .^ 232 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. that not a few were garnished with booted or slippered feet. This seemed the favorite attitude for study, by which knowl- edge, absorbed at the pedal extremities, is conducted by the inclmed plane of the legs to the body, finally mounting as high as its source, siphon-like, to the brain. Any movement by which the feet might be lowered during this process would, we are persuaded, cause the hardly gained learning to flow back again to the feet. Others of the students were squatted in Indian fashion, their elbows on their knees, their chins resting in their palms, with knitted brows and eyes fixed on vacancy, in which, did we possess the conjurer's art, the coming University boat- race or the last base-ball tournament would, we fancy, apjDear instead of Latin classics. Perhaps we have not rightly inter- preted the expressions of others, wliich seemed to say, in the language of one whose brain Avas stretched upon the same rack a century and a quarter ago : — '•' Now algebra, geometry, Aritlinietick, astronomy, Opticks, chronology and staticks, All tiresome parts of mathematics, With twenty harder names than these. Disturb my brains and break my peace." It was formerly the practice of the Sophomores to notify the Freshmen to assemble in the Chapel, where they were indoc- trinated in the ancient customs of the College, the latter being required " to keep their places in their seats, and attend with decency to the reading." Among these customs, descended from remote times, was one which forbade a Freshman ''to wear his hat in the College yard, unless it rains, hails, or snows, provided he be on foot, and have not both hands full." The same prohibition extended to all undergraduates when any of the governors of the College were in the yard. These absurd " relics of barbarism " had become entirely obsolete before 1800. The degrading custom which made a Freshman subservient to all other classes, and obliged him to go of errands like a pot- boy in an alehouse, the Senior having the prior claim to his service, died a natural death, without the interposition of A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 233 authority. It became the practice under this state of things for a Freshman to choose a Senior as a patron, to whom he acknowledged service, and who, on his part, rendered due pro- tection to his servitor from the demands of others. These petty offices, when not unreasonably required, could be enforced by an appeal to a tutor. The President and immediate govern- ment had also their Freslimen. It is noteworthy that the abolition of this menial custom was recommended by the Over- seers as early as 1772; but the Corporation, which, doubtless, de- rived too many advantages from a continuance of the j)ractice, rejected the proposal. Another custom obliged the Freshman to measure liis strength with the Sophomore in a wrestling-match, which usually took place during the second week in the term on the College play- ground, which formerly bounded on Charlestown road, now Kirkland Street, and included about an acre and a half. This playground was enclosed by a close board fence, which began about fifty feet north of Hollis and extended back about three hundred feet, separating the playground from the College buildings. The playground had a front on the Common of about sixty-five feet, and was entered on the side of Hollis. " This enclosure, an irregular square, contained two thirds or more of the ground on which Stoughton stands, the greater part of the land on which Holworthy stands, together with about the same quantity of land in front of the same, the land back of Holworthy, including part of a road since laid out, and perhaps a very small portion of the western extremity of the Delta, so called." * This was the College gymnasia, where the students, after evening prayers, ran, leaped, wrestled, played at quoits or cricket, and at good, old-fashioned, obsolete bat and ball, — not the dangerous pastime of to-day, but where you stood up, man- fashion, with nothing worse resulting than an occasional eye in " Like sportive deer they coursed about, And shouted as they ran, Turning to mirth all things of eartli, As only boyhood can." * Willard. 234 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Any account of Harvard which ignored the clubs would be incomplete. Besides the Phi Beta Kappa was the Porcelliau, founded by the Seniors about 1793. It was originally called the Pig Club, but, for some unknown reason, this homely but ex- pressive derivation was translated into a more euphonious title. A writer remarks that learned pigs have sometimes been on ex- hibition, but, to our mind, to have been educated among them would be but an ill j^assport into good society. There was also the Hasty Pudding Club, — a name significant of that savory, farinaceous substance, the dish of many generations of N^ew- Englanders. Whether this society owed its origin to sumptuary regulations we are unable to say ; but a kettle of the article, steaming hot, suspended to a pole, and borne by a brace of students across the College yard, were worth a visit to Old Harvard to have witnessed. Commencement, Neal says, was formerly a festival second only to the day of the election of the magistrates, usually termed "Election Day." The account in "^ew England's Eirst Fruits" gives the manner of conducting the academical exercises in 1642 : — "The students of the first classis that have beene these foure yeeres* trained up in University learning (for their ripening in the knowl- edge of tongues and arts) and are approved for their manners, as they have kept their public Acts in former yeares, om-selves being present at them ; so have they lately kept two solemn Acts for their Commencement, when Governour, Magistrates and the Ministers from all parts, with all sorts of schollars, and others in great num- bers were present and did heare their exercises ; which were Latine and Greeke Orations, and Declamations, and Hebrew Analasis, Grammaticall, Logicall and Ehetoricall of the Psalms ; And their answers and disputations in Logicall, Ethicall, Physicall, and Meta- physicall questions ; and so were found worthy of the first degree (commonly called Bachelour pro more Academiarum in Anglia) ; Being first presented by the President to the Magistrates and Minis- ters, and by him upon their approbation, solemnly admitted unto the same degree, and a booke of arts delivered into each of their hands, and the power given them to read Lectures in the hall upon * Fixing the founding in 1638. A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 235 any of the arts, when they shall be thereunto called, and a liberty of studying in the library." Commencement continued to be celebrated as a red-letter day, second only to the republican anniversary of the Fourth of July. The merry-makings under the tents and awnings erected within the College grounds, for the entertainment of the guests, who had assembled to do honor to the literary triumphs of their friends or relatives, were completely eclipsed by the saturnalia going on without on the neighboring Common. This space was covered with booths, within which the hungry and thirsty might fiud refreshment, or the unwary be initiated into the mysteries of sweat-cloth, dice, or roulette. Side-shows, with performing monkeys, dogs, or perhaps a tame bear, less savage than his human tormentors, drew their gaping multi- tudes, ever in movement, from point to point. Gaming was freely indulged in, and the Maine Law was not. As the day waxed, the liquor began to produce its legitimate results, sAvearing and fighting taking the place of the less exciting ex- hibitions. The crowd surged around the scene of each pugilistic encounter, upsetting the booths, and vociferating encouragement to the combatants. The best man emerged with battered nose, eyes swelled and inflamed, his clothes in tatters, to receive the plaudits of the mob and the pledge of victory in another bowl of grog, while the vanquished sneaked away amid the jeers and derision of the men and the hootings of the boys. These orgies, somewhat less violent at the beginning of the present century, were by degrees brought mtliin the limits of decency, and finally disappeared altogether. This was one of those " good old time " customs which we have sometimes known recalled with long-drawn sigh and woful shake of the head over our own days of State police, lemonade, and degeneracy. During the early years of the Revolution, and as late as 1778, there was no public Commencement at Harvard. Dress was a matter to which students gave little heed at the beginning of the century. The College laws required them to wear coats of blue-gray, with gowns as a substitute, in warm weather, — except on public occasions, Avhen black gowns were 236 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. permitted. Little does your spruce young undergraduate of to-day resemble, in this respect, his predecessor, who went about the College grounds, and even the village, attired in summer in a loose, long gown of calico or gingham, varied in winter by a similar garment of woollen stuff, called lambskin. With a cocked hat on liis head, and peaked-toed shoes on his feet, your collegian was not a bad counterpart of Dominie Sampson in dishabille, if not in learning. Knee-breeches began to be dis- carded about 1800 by the young men, but were retained by a few of the elders until about 1825, when pantaloons had so far established themselves that it was unusual to see small-clothes except upon the limbs of some aged relic of the old regime. Top-boots, with the' yellow lining falling over, and cordovans, or half-boots, made of elastic leather, fitting itself to the shape of the leg, belonged to the time of which we are writing. The tendency, it must be admitted, has been towards improvement, and the present generation fully comprehends how " Braid claith lends fouk an unca heeze ; Maks mony kail-worms butterflees ; Gies mony a doctor his degrees, For little skaith ; In short you may be what you please, W'i guid braid claith." An example of the merits of dress was somewhat ludicrously presented by a colloquy between two Harvard men who arrived at eminence, and who were as wide apart as the poles in their attention to personal appearance. Theophilus Parsons was a man very negligent of his outward seeming, while Harrison Gray Otis was noted for his fine linen and regard for his apparel. The elegant Otis, having to cross-examine a witness in court whose appearance was slovenly in the extreme, commented upon the man's filthy exterior with severity, and spoke of him as a " dirty fellow," because he had on a dirty shirt. Parsons, whose witness it was, objected to the badgering of Otis. " Why," said Otis, turning to Parsons, with ill-concealed irony, " how many shirts a week do you wear. Brother Par- sons 1 " A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 237 " I wear one shirt a week," was the reply. " How many do you wear ? " " I change my shirt every day, and sometimes oftener," said Otis. " Well," retorted Parsons, " you must be a ' dirty fellow ' to soil seven shirts a week when I do but one." There was a sensation in the court-room, and ]\Ir. Otis sat dowQ with his plumage a little ruffled. " For though you had as wise a snout on, As Shakespeare or Sir Isaac Newton, Your judgment fouk would hae a doubt on, I '11 tak my aith, Till they would see ye wi' a suit on 0' guid braid claith." The silken " Oxford Caps," formerly worn in public by the collegians, are well remembered. These were abandoned, in public places, through the force of circumstances alone, as they drew attentions of no agreeable nature upon the wearer when he wandered from the protecting segis of his Alma Mater. In the neighboring city, should his steps unfortunately tend thither, the sight of his headpiece at once aroused the war-cries of the clans of Cambridge Street and the West End. " An Oxford Cap ! an Oxford Cap ! " reverberated through the dirty lanes, and was answered by the instant muster of an ill-omened rabble of sans-culottes. Stones, mud, and unsavory eggs were showered upon the \\Tetched " Soph," whose conduct on these occasions justified the derivation of his College title. Sometimes he stood his ground to be pummelled until within an inch of taking his degree in another world, and finally to see his silken helmet borne off in triumph at the end of a broomstick ; generally, however, he obeyed the dictates of discretion and took incon- tinently to his heels. At sight of these ugly black bonnets, worthy a familiar of the Inquisition, the whole neighborhood seemed stirred to its centre with a frenzy only to be assuaged when the student doffed his obnoxious casque or fled across the hostile border. The collegians, with a commendable esprit du corps, and a 238 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. valor worthy a better cause, clung to their caps with a chivalric devotion born alone of persecution. They learned to visit the city in bands instead of singly, but this only brought into action the reserves of " Xigger Hill," and enlarged the war. The North made common cause with the West, and South End with both. The Harvard boys armed themselves, and some dangerous night-affrays took place in the streets, for which the actors were cited before the authorities. Common-sense at length put an end to the disturbing cause, in which the stu- dents were obliged to confess the game was not worth the candle. The Oxford Caps were hung on the dormitory pegs, and order reigned in Warsaw. It is not designed to enumerate the many distinguished sons of Old Harvard whose names illuminate history. This is now being done in a series of biographies from an able pen.* One of the first class of graduates was George Downing, who went to England and became Chaplain to Colonel Okey's regiment, in Cromwell's army, — the same whom he afterwards betrayed in order to ingratiate himself in the favor of Charles 11. He was a brother-in-law of Governor Bradstreet and a good friend to Xew England. Doctor Johnson characterized him as the " dog Downing." He was ambassador to the states of Hol- land, and notwithstanding his reputation, soiled by the betrayal of some of his republican friends to the block, was a man of genius and address. No other evidence is needed to show that he was a scoundrel than the record of his treatment of his mother, in her old age, as related by herself : — "But I am now att ten pounde ayear for my chamber and 3 pound for my seruants wages, and haue to extend the other tene pound a year to accomadat for our meat and drinck ; and for my clothing and all other necessaries I am much to seeke, and more your brother Georg \vi\\ not hear of for me ; and that it is onely couetousness that maks me aske more. He last smner bought an- other town, near Hatly, called Clappum, cost him 13 or 14 thou- sand pound, and I really beleeue one of us 2 are couetous." Downing Street, London, was named for Sir George when * John L. Sillier, Librarian. A DAY AT HARVAKD, CONTINUED. 239 the office of Lord Treasurer was put in commission (May, 1667), and Downing College, Cambridge, England, was founded by a grandson of the baronet, in 1717. The class of 1763 was in many respects a remarkable one, fruitful in loyalists to the mother country. Three refugee judges of the Supreme Court, of which number Sampson Salter Blowers lived to be a hundred, and, with the exception of Dr. Holyoke, the oldest of the Harvard alumni ; Bliss of Spring- field and Upham of Brookfield, afterwards judges of the high- est court in New Brunswick ; Dr. John Jeffries, the celebrated surgeon of Boston, and others of less note. On the Whig side were Colonel Timothy Pickering, General Jedediah Hunting- ton, who pronounced the first English oration ever delivered at Commencement, and Hon. Nathan Cushing. Benjamin Pratt, afterwards Chief Justice of New York under the crown, was a graduate of 1737. He had been bred a me- chanic, but, having met with a serious injury that disabled him from pursuing his trade, turned his attention to study. Gov- ernors Belcher, Hutchinson, Dummer, Spencer Phips, Bowdoin, Strong, Gerry, Eustis, Everett, T. L. Winthrop, the two Presi- dents Adams and the Governor of that name, are of those who have been distinguished in liigh political positions. The names of those who have become eminent in law, medicine, and divin- ity would make too formidable a catalogue for our limits. The Marquis ChasteUux, writing in 1782, says : — " I must here repeat, what I have observed elsewhere, that in comparing our universities and our studies in general with those of the Americans, it would not be to our interest to call for a decision of the question, which of the two nations should be considered an infant people." A University education, upon which, perhaps, too great stress is laid by a few narrow minds who would found an aristocracy of learning in the rei)ublic of letters, is unquestion- ably of great advantage, though not absolutely essential to a successful public career. It is a passport which smooths the way, if it does not guarantee superiority. Perhaps it has a 240 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. tendency to a clannishness which has but little sympathy with those whose acquirements have been gained while sternly fighting the battle of life in the pursuit of a livelihood. Through its means many have achieved honor and distinction, while not a few have arrived at the goal without it. Franklin, Eumford, Rittenhouse, and William Wirt are examples of so- called seK-made men which it would be needless to multiply. Even in England the proportion of collegians in public life is small. Twenty-five years ago Lord Lyndhurst said in a speech that, when he began his political career a majority of the House of Commons had received a University education, while at the time of which he was speaking not more than one fifth had been so educated. The practice Avhich prevails in our country, especially at the West, of distinguishing every country semi- nary with the name of college, is deserving of unquaUfied reprobation. It would be curious to trace the antecedents of the posses- sors of some of the great names in history. Columbus was a weaver ; Sixtus V. kept swine ; Ferguson and Burns were shepherds; Defoe was a hosier's apprentice; Hogarth, an en- graver of pewter pots ; Ben Jonson was a brick-layer ; Cer- vantes was a common soldier ; Halley was the son of a soap- boiler ; Arkwright was a barber, and Belzoni the son of a bar- ber ; Canova was the son of a stone-cutter, and Shakespeare commenced life as a menial. The historic associations of Harvard are many and interest- ing. The buildings have frequently been used by the legislative branches of the provincial government. In 1729 the General Court sat here, having been adjourned from Salem by Governor Burnet, in August. Again in the stormy times of 1770 the Court was prorogued by Hutchinson to meet here instead of at its ancient seat in Boston. Wagers were laid at great odds that the Assembly would not proceed to do business, considering themselves as under restraint. They, however, opened their session imder protest, by a vote of 59 yeas to 29 nays. Urgent public business gave the Governor a triumph, which was ren- dered as empty as possible by every annoyance the members in A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 241 their ingenuity could invent. The j^receding May the election of councillors had been held in Cambridge, conformably to Governor Hutchinson's orders, but contrary to the charter and the sense of the whole province. This was done to prevent any popular demonstration in Boston, but the patriotic party celebrated the day there, and their friends flocked into town from the country as usual. An ox was roasted whole on the Common and given to the populace. The tragic events of the 5th of March, 1770, had occasioned great indignation and uneasiness, which the acquittal of Cap- tain Preston and his soldiers contributed to keep alive. The following is a copy of the paper posted upon the door of Boston Town House (Old State House), December 13, 1770, and for which Governor Hutchinson oflered a reward of a hundred pounds lawful money, to be paid out of the public treasury. Otway's " Venice Preserved " seems to have furnished the text to the writer : — " To see the sufferings of my iQWovf-toionsmen And own myself a man ; To see the Court Cheat the injured people with a shew Of justice, which toe ne'er can taste of ; Drive ns like wrecks down the rough tide of power, While no hold is left to save us from destruction, All that bear this are slaves, and we as such, Not to rouse up at the great call of Nature And free the luorld from such domestic tyrants." Harvard has not been free from those insurrectionary ebulli- tions common to universities. In most instances they have originated in Commons Hall; the grievances of the stomach, if not promptly redressed, leading to direful results. Sydney Smith once remarked, that " old friendshijDS are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted meat has led to suicide." The stomachs of the students seem, on sundry occasions, to have been no less sensitive. In 1674 all the scholars, except three or four whose friends lived in Cambridge, left the College. In the State archives exists a curious document relative to a difficulty about com- mons at an early period in the history of the College. It is the 11 r 242 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. confession of ^N'athaniel Eaton and wife, who were cited before the General Court for misdemeanors in providing diet for the students. In Mrs. Eaton's confession the following passage occurs : — " And for bad fish, that they had it brought to table, I am sorry- there was that cause of offence given them. I acknowledge my sin in it. And for their mackerel, brought to them with their guts in them, and goat's dung in theh^ hasty pudding, its utterly unknown to me ; but I am much ashamed it should be in the family and not prevented by myself or servants and I humbly acknowledge my negligence in it." The affair of the resignation of Dr. Langdon has been men- tioned. In 1807 there was a general revolt of all the classes against theii' commons, which brought the affairs of the College nearly to a stand for about a month. The classes, having en masse refused to attend commons, were considered in the light of outlaws by the government, and were obliged to subscribe to a form of apology dictated by it to obtain readmission. Many refused to sign a confession a little humiliating, and left the College ; but the greater number of the prodigals accepted the alternative, though we do not learn that any fatted calf was killed to celebrate the return of harmony. This was during Dr. Webber's presidency. The students have ever been imbued with strong patriotic feelings. In 1768 the Seniors unanimously agreed to take their degrees at Commencement dressed in black cloth of the manu- facture of the country. In 1812 they proceeded in a body to work on the forts in Boston harbor. In the great Rebellion the names of Harvard's sons are inscribed among the heroic, living or dead for their country. The seal of Harvard was " adopted at the first meeting of the governors of the College after the first charter was obtained. On the 27th of December, 1643, a College seal was adopted, having, as at present, three open books on the field of an heraldic shield, with the motto Veritas inscribed." This, says Mr. Quincy, is the only seal which has the sanction of any record. The first seal actually used had the motto "/?z Christi A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED. 243 Gloriam" which conveys the idea of a school of theology, and is indirectly sanctioned by the later motto, Christo et Ecclesice. The Americans threw up works on the College green in 1775, which were probably among the earliest erected by the Colony forces. They were begun in May, and extended towards the river. An aged resident of Cambridge informed the writer that a fort had existed in what is now Holyoke Place, leading from Mount Auburn Street, — a point which may be assumed to indicate the right flank of the first position. The lines in the vicinity of the College were carefully effaced, some few traces being remarked in 1824. They were, in all probability, hastily planned, and soon abandoned for the Dana Hill posi- tion, by which they were commanded. The first official action upon fortifications which appears on record is the recommendation of a joint committee of the Com- mittee of Safety and the*council of war — a body composed of the general officers — to throw up works on Charlestown road, a redoubt on what is supposed to have been Prospect Hill to be armed with 9-pounders, and a strong redoubt on Bunker Hill to be mounted with cannon. These works were proposed on the 1 2th of May. The reader knows that the execution of the last-named work brought on the battle on that ground. Ever since Lexington the Americans looked for another sally of the royal forces. They expected it would be by way of Charlestown, and have the camps at Cambridge for its object. By landing a force on Charlestown Xeck, which the command of the water always enabled them to do, the enemy were within a little more than two miles of headquarters, while a force coming from Eoxbury side must first beat Thomas's troops sta- tioned there, and then have a long detour of several miles be- fore they could reach the river, where the passage might be expected to be blocked by the destruction of the bridge, and woidd at any rate cost a severe action, under great disadvantage, to have forced. A landing along the Cambridge shore was im- practicable. It was a continuous marsh, intersected here and there by a few farm-roads, impassable for artillery, without which the king's troops would not have moved. The Lexing- 244 HISTOEIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. ton expedition forced its way through these marshes with infinite difficulty. The EngHsh commander might land his troops at Ten Hills, as had already been done ; but to prevent this was the object of the possession of Bunker Hill. He was therefore reduced to the choice of the two great highways lead- ing into Boston, with the advantages greatly in favor of that Avhich passed on the side of Charlesto^vn. The advanced post of the Americans on old Charlestown road, which was meant to secure the camp on this side, was near the point where it is now intersected by Beacon Street. It was distant about five eighths of a mile from Cam- bridge Common. The road, which has here been straightened, formerly curved towards the north, crossing the head of the west fork of Willis Creek (Miller's Eiver), by what was called Pillon Bridge. The road also passed over the east branch of the same stream near the present crossing of the Fitchburg Eailway, where a mere rivulet appears to indicate its vicinity. The works at Pillon Bridge were on each side of the road ; that on the north running up the declivity of the hill now crossed by Park Street, and occupying a commanding site. The ex- istence of a watercourse here may still be traced in the vener- able willows which once skirted its banks, and even by the dry bed of the stream itself. The bridge, according to appearances, was situated seventy-five or a hundred yards north of the pres- ent point of junction of the two roads, now known as Wash- ington and Beacon Streets. At the Cambridge line the former takes the name of Kirkland Street. CAMBRIDGE CAAIP. 245 CHAPTEE XI. CAMBRIDGE CAMP. " Father and I went down to camp Along with Captain Gooding, And there we see the men and boys As thick as hasty pudding." THEEE is a certain historical coincidence in the fact that the armies of the Parliament in England and of the Congress in America were each mustered in Cambridge. Old Cambridge, in 1642-43, was generally for the king, and the University tried unsuccessfully to send its plate out of Oliver's reach. In 1775 the wealth and influence of American Cam- bridge were also for the king, but the University was stanch for the Eevolution. We confess we should like to see, on a spot so historic as Cambridge Common, an equestrian statue to George Washing- ton, '^ Fater, Liberator, Defensor Patrice." Besides being the muster-field where the American army of the Eevolution had its being, it is consecrated by other memories. It was the place of arms of the settlers of 1631, who selected it for their strong fortress and intrenched camp. Within this field the flag of thirteen stripes was first unfolded to the air. We have already had occasion to refer to the uprising of Middlesex in 1774, when the crown servitors resident in Cambridge had their judicial commissions revoked in the name of the people. It was also the place where George the Third's speech, sent out by the " Boston gentry," was committed to the flames. Before reviewing the Continental camp, a brief retrospect of the military organization of the early colonists will not be deemed inappropriate. In the year 1644 the militia was or- ganized, and the old soldier, Dudley, appointed major-general. Endicott was the next incumbent of tliis new oflice ; Gibbons, 246 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. the third, had first commanded the Suffolk regiments ; Sedg- wick, the fourth, the Middlesex regiment. After Sedgwick came Atherton, Denison, Leverett, and Gookin, who was the last major-general under the old charter. These officers were also styled sergeants major-general, a title borrowed from Old England. They were chosen annually by the freemen, at the same time as the governor and assistants, while the other mili- tary officers held for life. Old Edward Johnson, describing the train-bands in Gibbons's time, says his forts were in good repair, his artillery well mounted and cleanly kept, half-cannon, culverins, and sakers, as also fieldj^ieces of brass, very ready for service. A soldier in 1630-40 wore a steel cap or head-piece, breast and back piece, buff coat, bandoleer, containing his powder, and carried a matchlock. He was also armed with a long sword suspended by a belt from the shoulder. In the time of Philip's War the Colony forces were provided with blunderbusses and also with hand-grenadoes, which were found effectual in driving the Indians from an ambush. A troop at this time numbered sixty horse, besides the officers', all well mounted and completely armed with back, breast, head-piece, buff coat, sword, carbine, and pistols. Each of the twelve troops in the Colony were distinguished by their coats. In time of war the pay of a cap- tain of horse was £ 6 per month ; of a captain of foot, £ 4 ; of a private soldier, one shilling a day. Military punishments were severe ; the strapado, or riding the wooden horse so as to bring the blood, being commonly inflicted for offences one grade be- low the death-penalty. The governor had the chief command, but the major-generals did not take the field, their offices being more for profit than for fighting. With improved fire-arms, when battles were no more to be decided by hand-to-hand encounters, armor gradually went out of fashion. " Farewell, then, ancient men of might ! Crusader, errant-squire, and knight ! Our coats and customs soften ; To rise would only make you weep ; Sleep on, in rusty iron sleep, As in a safety coffin." CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 247 Bayonets as first used in England (about 1680) had a wooden haft, which was inserted in the mouth of the piece, answering thus the purpose of a partisan. The French, with whom the weapon originated, anticipated the Enghsh in fixing it with a socket. A French and British regiment in one of the wars of William III. encountered in Flanders, where this dif- ference in the manner of using the bayonet was near deciding the day in favor of the French battalion. This weapon, once so important that the British infantry made it their peculiar boast, is now seldom used, except perhaps as a defence against cavalry. Some confidence it still gives to the soldier, but its most important function in these days of long-range small- arms is the splendor with which it invests the array of a bat- talion as it stands on parade. We do not know of a com- mander who would now order a bayonet-charge, although in the early battles of the Revolution it often turned the scale against us. After the battle of Lexington the Committee of Safety re- solved to enhst eight thousand men for seven months. A com- pany was to consist of one captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, four sergeants, a drummer and fifer, and seventy privates. Nine companies formed a regiment, of which the field-officers were a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, and major. Each of the field-officers had a company which was called his own, as each of the general officers, beginning with Ward himself, had his regiment. The aggregate of the rank and file was, two days afterward, reduced to fifty. This must be considered as the first organization of the army of the Thirteen Colo- nies, — as they afterwards adopted it as their own, — the army which fought at Bunker Hill, and opened the trenches around Boston. This Common was the grand parade of the army. Here were formed every morning, under supervision of the Brigadier of the Day, the guards for Lechmere's Point, Cobble Hill, White House, North, South, and Middle Redoubts, Lechmere's Point tete du pont^ and the main guards for Winter Hill, Prospect Hill, and Cambridge. Hither were marched the de- 248 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. tachments which assembled on their regimental parades at eight o'clock. Arms, accoutrements, and clothing underwent the scrutiny of Greene, Sullivan, or Heath. This finished, the grand guard broke off into small bodies, which marched to their designated stations to the music of the fife and drum. We may here mention that the " ear-piercing fife " was in- troduced into the British army after the campaign of Flanders in 1748. This instrument was first adopted by the Eoyal Regiment of Artillery, the musicians receiving theu- instruction from John Ulricli, a Hanoverian fifer, brought from Flanders by Colonel Belford when the allied army separated. Nothing puts life into the soldier like this noisy little reed. You shall see a band of weary, footsore men, after a long march, fall into step, close up their ranks, and move on, a serried phalanx, at the scream of the fife. Fortunate indeed was he who witnessed this old-fashioned guard-mount, where the first efi'orts to range in order the non- descript battalia must have filled the few old soldiers present with despair. There was no uniformity in weapons, dress, or equipment, and until the arrival of Washington not an epau- lette in camp. The ofiicers could not have been picked out of the line for any insignia of rank or superiority of attire over the common soldiers. Some, perhaps, had been fortunate enough to secure a gorget, a sword, or espontoon, but all car- ried their trusty fusees. All that went to make up the outward pomp of the soldier was wanting. Compared with the scarlet uniforms, burnished arms, and compact files of the troops to whom they were opposed, our own poor fellows were the veriest ragamuffins ; but the contrast in this was not more striking than were the diff'erent motives with which each combated : the Briton fought the battle of his king, the American soldier his own. The curse of the American army was in the short enlistments. Men were taken for two, three, and six months, and scarcely arrived in camp before they infected it with that dangerous dis- ease, homesickness. The same experience awaited the nation in CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 249 the great civil war. In truth, if history is 2)hilosophy teaching by example, we make little progress in forming armies out of the crude material. If the Americans were so contemptible in infantry, they were even more so in artillery, — as for cavalry, it was a thing as yet unknown in an army in which many field-officers could not obtain a mount. The enemy was well supplied with field and siege pieces, abundant suppHes of which had been sent out, while the reserves of the Castle and fleet were drawn upon as circumstances demanded. The unenterprising spirit of the British commander rendered all this disparity much less alarm- ing than it would have been with a Carleton or Cornwallis, instead of a Gage or Howe. An eyewitness relates that " The British appeared so inojffensive that the Americans enjoyed at Cambridge the conviviality of the season. The ladies of the prm- cipal American officers repaired to the camp. Civility and mutual forbearance appeared between the officers of the royal and conti- nental armies, and a frequent interchange of flags was indulged for the gratification of the diflerent partisans." The earliest arrangement of this chrysalis of an army was about as follows. The regiments were encamped in tents as fast as possible, but as this supply soon gave out, old sails, con- tributed by the seaport towns, were issued as a substitute. Patterson's, Whitcomb's, Doolittle's, and Gridley's pitched their tents, and were soon joined under canvas by Glover. Mxon's lay on Charlestown road ; a part of the regiment in Mr. Fox- croft's barn. The houses were at first used chiefly as hospitals for the sick. Patterson's hospital was in Andrew Boardman's house, near his encampment ; Gridley's, in ISIr. Pobshaw's. Sherifl" Phip's house was hospital I^o. 2, over Avhich Dr. Duns- more presided. Drs. John Warren, Isaac Eand, AVilliam Eustis, James Thacher, Isaac Foster, and others officiated in the hospi- tals, under the chief direction of Dr. Church. Jolin Pigeon was commissary-general to the forces. We are able to give an exact return of all the regiments in Cambridge on the 10th of July, 1775, with the number of men in each : — 11 * 505. James Scammon, 529. 487. Thomas Gardner, 334. 571. Jonathan Brewer, 373. 351. B. Ruggles Woodbridge, 343. 473. Paul Dudley Sargeant, 192. 445. Samuel Gerrish, 258. 482. John Mansfield, 507. 519. Edmund Phinney, 163. 492. Moses Little, 543. 509. 250 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Jonathan Ward, William Prescott, Asa Whitcomb, Ephraim Doolittle, James Fry, Richard Gridley, John Nixon, John Glover, John Patterson, Ebenezer Bridge, Two companies of Bond's and two of Gerrish's were at Med- ford. Maiden, and Chelsea. Phiuney had only three companies in camp. This seems to have been before the troops were arranged in grand divisions and newly brigaded by Washing- ton. The aggregate of the troops in Cambridge presented by the above return was 8,076, of which probably not many in excess of six thousand were for duty. Under the new arrange- ment of forces Scammon's was ordered to No. 1 and the redoubt on the flank of No. 2, Heath's to No. 2, Patterson to No. 3, and Prescott to SewaU's Point. On the 10th of January, 1 776,' when the returns of the whole army only amounted to 8,212 men, but 5,582 were returned fit for duty. Gridley calls for fascines, gabions, pickets, etc., for the bat- teries, and makes requisitions for the service of a siege-train. The artillery, such as it was, but lately dragged from places of concealment, was without carriages, horses, or harness. There were no intrenching tools except such as could be obtained of private persons, no furnaces for casting shot, — no anything but pluck and resolution, and of that there was enough and to spare. Armorers were set to work repairing the men's firelocks. Knox, Burbeck, Crane, Mason, and Crafts mounted the artil- lery. Sailmakers were employed making tents, carpenters to build barracks, and shoemakers and tailors as fast as they could be obtained, — the former in making shoes, cartouch- boxes, etc., the latter in clothing the soldiers. Shipwrights were building bateaux on the river. In this condition of ac- CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 251 tivity and chaos Washington found his army, and realized, per- haps for the first time, the magnitude of the work before him. From the Mystic to the Charles and from the Charles to the sea the air echoed to the sound of the hammer or the blows of the axe, the crash of falHng trees or the word of command. Another Carthage might have been rebuilding by another C^sar, and the ground trembled beneath the tread of armed men. Imao-ine such an army, without artillery or effective small- arms, without magazines or discipline, and unable to execute the smallest tactical manoeuvre should their lines be forced at any point, laying siege to a town containing ten thousand troops, the first in the world. It was, moreover, without a flag or a commander having absolute authority until Washington came. Picture to yourself a grimy figure behind a rank of gabions, Ms head wrapped in an old bandanna, a short pipe between his teeth, stripped of his upper garments, his lower limbs encased in leather breeches, yarn stockings, and hob-nailed shoes, indus- triously plying mattock or spade, and your provincial soldier of 75 stands before you. Multiply him by ten thousand, and you have the provincial army. It is certain that no common flag had been adopted by any authority up to February, 1776, though the flag of thirteen stripes had been displayed in January. The following extract from a regimental order book will answer the oft-repeated in- quiry as to whether the contingents from the different Colonies fought under the same flag in 1775 : — " Head Quarters 20th February 1776. " Parole Manchester : Coiintersigii Boyle. " As it is necessary that every regiment should be furnished with colours and that those colours bear some kind of similitude to the regiment to which they belong, the colonels with their respective Brigadiers and with the Q. M. G. may fix upon any such as are proper and can be procured. There must be for each regiment the standard for regimental colours and colours for each grand division, the whole to be small and licrht. The number of the regiment is to 252 HISTOKIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. be marked on the colours and such a motto as the colonels may choose, in fixing upon which the general advises a consultation among them. The colonels are to delay no time in getting the mat- ter fix'd that the Q. M. General may provide the colours for them as soon as possible. G? Washington." Washington's first requisition on arriving in camp was for one hundred axes and bunting for colors. At the battle of Long Island, fought August, 1776, a regimental color of red damask, having only the word " Liberty " on the field, was captured by the British. As late as Monmouth there were no distinctive colors. The whipping-post, where minor offences against military law- were expiated, was to be met with in every camp. The prison- ers received the sentence of the court-martial on their naked backs; from twenty to forty lashes (the limit of the Jewish law) with a cat-o'-nine-tails being the usual punishment. This barbarous custom, inherited from the English service, was long retained in the American army. Its disuse in the navy is too recent to need special mention. Incorrigible offenders were drummed out of camp ; but though there aje instances of the death-penalty having been adjudged by courts-martial, there is not a recorded case of military execution in the American army during the whole siege. The men in general were healthy, — much more so in Eox- bury than in Cambridge, and Thomas had the credit of keep- ing liis camps in excellent order. In July, 1776, a company of ship carpenters was raised and sent to General Schuyler at Albany for service on the lakes. A company of bread-bakers was another feature of our camp. The troops did not pile or stack their arms. They had few bayonets. The custom was to rest the guns upon wooden horses made for the purpose. In w-et weather they were taken into the tents or quarters. We have dwelt upon details that may appear trivial, unless the reconstruction of the Continental camps, with fidelity in all things, and dedicated in all honor to the patriot army, be our sufficient warrant. Pope Day, the anniversary of Guy Fawkes's abortive plot CAMBRIDGE CAxMP. 253 (November 5, 1605), had long been observed in the Colonies. It was proposed to celebrate it in the American camp on the return of the day in 1775, but General Washington character- ized it as a ridiculous and childish custom, and expressed his surprise that there should be officers and men in the army so void of common-sense as not to see its impropriety at a time when the Colonies were endeavoring to bring Canada into an aUiance with themselves against the common enemy. The General argued that the Canadians, who were largely Catholic, would feel their religion insulted. The British, on the con- trary, celebrated the day with salvos of artillery. As the crisis of the siege approached, Washington sternly forbade all games of chance. The glorious evening in June came, when the dark clusters of men gathered on the greensward for Breed's HiU. Silently they stood while Dr. Langdon knelt on the threshold of yonder house and prayed for their good speed. The men tighten their belts and feel if their flints are firmly fixed. Their faces we cannot see, but Ave w^arrant their teeth are shut hard, and a strange fight, the gleam of battle, is in their eyes. A nocturnal march, with conflict at the end of it, wiU try the nerves of the stoutest soldier. What will it then do for men who have yet to fire a shot in anger 1 They whisper together, and we know what they say, — "To-morrow, comrade, we On the battle plain must be, There to conquer or both lie low ! " Some one who has fairly judged of the raw recruit in general doubts if the Americans reserved their fire at Bunker Hill. The answer is conclusive. As the enemy marched to the attack a few scattering shots were fired at them, soon checked by the leaders. This is the testimony of both sides, and is, in this case, perhaps, exceptional. But the best answer is in the enemy's frightful list of casualties, — a thousand and more men are not placed hors du combat in less than two hours by indiscriminate popping. The first attempts at uniforming the Continentals were any- 254 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. thing but successful, the absence of cloth, except the homespun of the country, rendering it impracticable. Chester's company, which was clothed in blue turned up with red, is the only one in uniform at the battle of Bunker Hill of which we have any account. In Edmund Phinney's regiment, stationed in Boston after the departure of the English, the men were supplied with coats and double-breasted jackets of undyed cloth, just as it came from the looms, turned up with buff facings. They had also blue breeches, felt hats with narrow brims and white bind- ing. Another regiment, being raised in the same town, wore black faced with red. The motto on the button was, " Inimica Tyrannis,'' above a hand with a naked sword. During this year (1776) homespun or other coats, brown or any other color, made large and full-lapelled, with facings of the same or of white, cloth jackets without sleeves, cloth or leather breeches, large felt hats, and yarn stockings of all colors, were purchased by the Continental agents. Smallwood's Maryland regiment was clothed in red, but Washington eventually prohibited this color, for obvious reasons. In jSTovember, 1776, Paul Jones captured an armed vessel, which had on board ten thousand complete sets of uniform, destined for the troops in Canada under Carleton and Burgoyne. The American levies in the British ser^dce were first attired in green, which they finaUy and with heavy hearts exchanged for red, as a prelude to their being drafted into British regiments. The term " Continent " was applied to the thirteen Colonies early in 1776, to distinguish their government from that of the Provinces, and hence the name Continental, as applied to the army of their adoption. The surroundings of Cambridge Common invite our attention, and of these the old gambrel-roof house, situated between Kirk- land Street and North Avenue, naturally claims precedence. To the present generation this is known as the birthplace of our Autocrat of the Breakfast-table, our songster in many keys, ever welcome in any guise, whether humorous, pathetic, or even a little satirical withal. It was a good house to be born in, and does honor to the poet's choice, as his bouquet of CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 255 fraf^rant memories, culled for the readers of tlie " Atlantic," does honor to the poet's self. It is certainly no disadvantage to have first drawn breath in a house which was the original headquarters of the Ameri- can army of the Revolution, and in which ^^^ the battle of Bunker Hill was planned and ^/ ordered. The old house is pleasant to look Q"^ at, though built originally for nothing more Q pretending than a farm-house. It has a thoroughly sturdy and honest look, hke its old neighbor, the President's house, and in nothing except its yeUow and white paint does it seem to counterfeit the royalist man- wi.MJt-1.1.. sions of Tory Row. The Professor tells us it once had a row of Lombardy poplars on the west, but now not a single speci- men of the tree can be found of the many that once stood stiffly up at intervals around the Common. The building fronts the south, with the CoUege edifices of its own time drawn up in ugly array before it. Beyond, in unobstructed view, are the Square, the church with its lofty steeple, and its Anglican neighbor of the lowlier tower, where, — " Like sentinel and nun they keep Their vigil on the green ; One seems to guard and one to weep The dead that lie between." The west windows look upon the Common, with its beautiful monument in its midst, and bordered by other houses with walls as famihar to the scenes of a hundred years ago as are those of our present subject. Were we to indulge our fancy, we might as easily invest these old houses with the gift of vision through their many glassy eyes, as to give ears to their waUs ; we might imagine their looks of recognition, doubtful of their own identity, amid the changes which time has wrought in their vicinage. It is at least a singular chance that fixed the homes of Long- fellow, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, and Everett in houses of greater or less historic celebrity ; but it is not merely a coinci- 256 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. deuce that has given these authors a decided preference for liis- torical subjects. All are students of history ; all either are or have been valued members of our historical societies. Evan- gehne, The Scarlet Letter, and Old Ironsides are pledges that the more striking subjects have not escaped them. In the roll of proprietors of the old gambrel-roof house, which Dr. Holmes supposes to be about one hundred and fifty years old, but which we should judge even more ancient, the first to appear is Jabez Fox, described as a tailor, of Boston, to whom the estate was allotted in 1707, and whose heirs sold it to Farmer Jonathan Hastings thirty years later, with the four acres of land pertaining to the messuage. The first Jonathan Hastings is the same to whom Gordon attributes the origin of the word "yankee." He says : — " It was a cant, favorite word with Farmer Jonathan Hastings of Cambridge about 1713. Two aged ministers who were at the College in that town have told me they remembered it to have been then in use among the students, but had no recollection of it before that period. The inventor used it to express excellency. A Yankee good horse, or Yankee good cider, and the like, were an excellent good horse and excellent cider. The students used to hire horses of him, and the use of the term upon all occasions led them to adopt it, and they gave him the name of Yankee Jon." Gordon supposes that the students, upon leaving College, circulated the name through the country, as the phrase " Hob- son's choice " was established by the students at Cambridge, in Old England, though the latter derivation is disputed by Mr. Ker, who calls it " a Cambridge hoax." The second Jonathan Hastings, long the College Steward, Avas born in 1708, graduated at Harvard in 1730, and died in 1783, aged seventy-five. It was during his occupancy that the house acquired its paramount importance. He was appointed postmaster of Cambridge in July, 1775, as the successor of James Winthrop ; and his son Jonathan, who gi\aduated at Harvard in 1768, was afterwards postmaster of Boston. Walter Hastings, also of this family, was a surgeon of the 27th regi- ment of foot (American), from Chelmsford, at the battle of CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 257 Bunker Hill, and rendered efficient service there. Walter Hastings, of Boston, has a pair of gold sleeve-buttons worn by his grandsire on that day. His father, Walter Hastings, com- manded Fort Warren, now Fort Winthrop, in 1812. As early as April 24, 1775, and perhaps immediately after the battle of Lexington, the Committee of Safety established themselves in this house, and here were concerted all those measures for the organization of the army created by the Provin- cial Congress. It was here Captain Benedict Arnold reported on the 29th of April with a company from Connecticut, and made the proposal for the attempt on Ticonderoga, prompted by his daring disposition. It was, without doubt, in the right- hand room, on the lower floor, that Arnold received his first commission as colonel from the Committee, May 3, 1775, and his orders to raise a force and seize the strong places on the lakes. Thus Massachusetts has the dubious honor of having first commissioned this eminent traitor, whose authority was signed by another traitor, Benjamin Church, but whose treason was not then developed. '^ 'T is here but yet confused : Knavery's plain face is never seen till used." Arnold was the first to give information in relation to the number and calibre of the armament at Ticonderoga. As all that relates to this somewhat too celebrated personage has a certain interest, we give the substance of a private letter from a gentleman who was in Europe when General Arnold arrived there, and whose acquaintance in diplomatic cii'cles placed him in a position to be well informed. The revolution in England respecting the change of ministry was very sudden, and supposed to have been influenced by the honest representations of Lord Cornwallis relative to the im- practicability of reducing America, which rendered that gen- tleman not so welcome in England to the late Ministry as his brother-passenger. General Arnold, who, from encouragmg in- formation in favor of the conquest of America, was received with open arms by the king, caressed by the ministers, and Q 258 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. all imaginable attention showed him by all people on that side of the question. He was introduced to the king in town, with whom he had the honor of many private conferences ; and was seen walking with the Prince of Wales and the king's brother in the public gardens. The queen was so interested in favor of Mrs. Arnold as to desire the ladies of the court to pay much attention to her. On the other hand, the papers daily con- tained such severe strokes at Arnold as would have made any other man despise himself; and the then opposition, after- wards in power, had so little regard for him, that one day, he being in the lobby of the House of Commons, a motion •was about to be made to have it cleared in order to get him out of it, but upon the member (the Earl of Surrey) being assured that he would not appear there again, the motion was not made. The name of the corporal who with eight privates constituted the crew of the barge in which Arnold made his escape from West Point to the Vulture, was James Lurvey, of Colonel Eufus Putnam's regiment. He is believed to have come from Worcester County. Arnold meanly endeavored to seduce the corporal from his flag by the offer of a commission in the Brit- ish service, but the honest fellow replied, " No, sir ; one coat is enough for me to wear at a time." This mansion was probably occupied by General Ward at a time not far from coincident with its possession by the Commit- tee of Safety, but of this there is no other evidence than that his frequent consultations with that body would seem to render it necessary. He received his commission as commander-in- chief of the Massachusetts forces on the 20th of May, 1775, at which time headquarters were unquestionably established here. It must be borne in mind, however, that the committee exer- cised the supreme authority of directing all military movements, and that General Ward was a subordinate. The fact that this was the Provincial headquarters has been doubtfully stated .from time to time, but is settled by the fol- lowing extract from the Provincial records, dated June 21, 1775: — CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 259 " Whereas, a great number of horses have been, from time to time, put into the stables and yard of Mr. Hastings, at headquarters, not belonging to the Colony, the Committee of Safety, or the gen- eral officers, their aids-de-camp, or post-riders, to the great expense of the public and inconvenience of the committee, generals, &c." General Ward's principal motive for quitting the army was a painful disease, which prevented his mounting his horse. His personal intrepidity and resolution are well illustrated by the following incident of Shays's Eebellion. The General was then chief justice of the court to be held in Worcester, September, 1786. On the morning the court was to open, the Eegailators, under Adam Wheeler, were in possession of the Court House. The judges had assembled at the house ol Hon. Joseph Allen. At the usual hour they, together with the justices of the sessions and members of the bar, moved in procession to the Court House. A sentinel challenged the advance of the procession, bringing his musket to the charge. General Ward sternly ordered him to recover his piece. The man, an old soldier of Ward's own regiment, awed by his manner, obeyed. Passing through the multitude, which gave way in sullen silence, the cortege reached the Court House steps, where were stationed a file of men with fixed bayonets, Wheeler, with a drawn sword, being in front. The crier was allowed to open the doors, which, being done, displayed another party of infantry with loaded muskets, as if ready to fire. Judge Ward then advanced alone, and the bayo- nets were presented at his breast. He demanded, repeatedly, who commanded the people there, and the object of these hos- tile acts. Wheeler at length replied that they had met to prevent the sitting of the courts until they could obtain redress of grievances. The judge then desired to address the people, but the leaders, who feared the effect upon their followers, re- fused to permit him to be heard. The drums beat and the guard were ordered to charge. " The soldiers advanced until the points of their bayonets pressed hard upon the breast of the chief justice, who stood immovable as a statue, without stirring a limb or yielding an inch, although the steel, in the hands of 260 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. desperate men, penetrated his dress. Struck with admiration by his intrepidity, the guns were removed, and Judge Ward, ascending the steps, addressed the assembly." '* Says sober Will, well Shays has fled, And peace returned to bless our days. Indeed, cries Ned, I always said, He 'd prove at last di.fall hack Shays." When the army first assembled under Ward, officers were frequently stopped by sentinels for want of any distinguishing badge of rank. This led to an order that they should wear ribbons across the breast, — red for the highest grade, blue for colonels, and other colors according to rank. It is well known that Washington spoke of the resignation of General Ward, after the evacuation of Boston, in a manner approaching contempt. His observations, then confidentially made, about some of the other generals, were not calculated to flatter their amour propre or that of their descendants. It is said that General Ward, learning long afterwards the remark that had been applied to him, accompanied by a friend, waited on his old chief at New York, and asked him if it was true that he had nsed such language. The President replied that he did not know, but that he kept copies of all his letters, and woidd take an early opportunity of examining them. Accordingly, at the next session of Congress (of which General Ward was a member), he again called with his friend, and was informed by the President that he had really written as alleged. Ward then said, " Sir, you are no gentleman'' and turning on his heel quitted the room. It is certain that the seizure of Dorchester Heights was re- solved upon early in May, 1775, or nearly a year before it was finally done by Washington. Information conveyed to the besiegers from Boston made it evident that the enemy were meditating a movement, which we now know from General Burgoyne was to have been first directed upon the heights of Dorchester, and secondly upon Charlestown. On the 9th of May, at a council of war at headquarters, the question proposed whether such part of the militia should be CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 261 called in to join the forces at Roxbiiry as would be sufficient to enable them to take possession of and defend Dorchester Hill, as well as to maintain the camp at Roxbury, was passed unani- mously in the affirmative. Samuel Osgood, Ward's major of brigade, signed the record of the vote. On the 10th of May an order was sent to all the colonels of the army to repair to the town of Cambridge, — "as we are meditating a blow at our restless enemies," — the general officers were directed to call in all the enlisted men, and none were allowed to depart the camps till the further orders of Congress. For some reason the enterprise was abandoned, but it shows that both belligerents were fully conscious from the first that the heights of Dorchester and Charlestown were the keys to Boston. Burgoyne says the descent on Dorchester was finally to have been executed on the 18th of June, and gives the par- ticulars of the plan of operations, — a scheme which the in- trenchment on the heights of Charlestown rendered abortive. The next whose personality is involved with the old house is Joseph Warren. The account preserved in the Hastings family is, that the patriot President-general was much pleased with Rebecca Hastings, who was then residing with her father, the College steward. The previous day the General had pre- sided at the deliberations of the Congress at Watertown, where he passed the night, coming down to Cambridge in the morning. His- steps tended most naturally to the old house where were his associates of the Committee, and the commanding general. There was perhaps a fair face at the window welcoming him with a smile as he, for the last time, drew up before the gate and alighted from his chaise. Warren, risen from a sick-bed, to which overwork and mental anxiety had consigned him, dressed himself with more than ordinary care, and, silencing the remonstrances of his more cautious colleague, Elbridge Gerry, proceeded to the scene of action at Bunker Hill on foot. The old farm-house is not yet to lose its claim as a visible memorial of the varying destinies through which our country passed. AYashington made it his headquarters upon his arrival 262 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. at camp, remaining in it three days, or until arrangements for his permanent residence could be made. He first dined at Cambridge with General Ward and his officers, — an occasion when all restraint appears to have been cast aside in the sponta- neous welcome which was extended him. After dinner Adjutant Gibbs, of Glover's, was hoisted (English fashion), chair and all, upon the table, and gave the company a rollicking bachelor's song, calculated to make the immobile features of the chief relax. It was a generous, hearty greeting of comrades in arms. Glasses clinked, stories were told, and the wine circulated. Washington was a man ; we do not question that he laughed, talked, and toasted with the rest. The headquarters being here already, it was natural for the General to choose to remain for the present where the archives, staff, and auxihary machinery enabled him to examine the condition and resources of the army he came to command. Consultations with General Ward were necessarily frequent. It was no doubt in this house Washington penned his first official despatches. Eliphalet Pearson, Professor of Hebrew and Oriental lan- guages, became the next inhabitant after what may be called the Restoration, when the sway of warlike men gave place on classic ground to the old reign of letters. Professor Pearson was noted for the sternness of his orthodoxy, as ex- hibited in his resistance to the entrance of Rev. Henry Ware into the HoUis professorship, and for his opposition to Andrew Craigie's efforts to secure a charter for his bridge, — efforts exerted in both instances for the behoof of the College, though in widely different spheres of action. Following him came Rev. Abiel Holmes, pastor of the First Church, early historian of Cambridge, whose ministry was suspended by a revolution in his parish, which resulted in the overthrow of the old and the elevation of the new. Dr. Holmes's widow, the daughter of Judge Oliver WendeU, con- tinued to live in the house some time after the decease of her husband in 1837. Oliver Wendell Holmes, their son, did not permanently reside in the old house after he left college. CAMBRIDGE CAMP. 263 The lines to Old Ironsides, to which allusion has been made, were composed in this old house when the poet was twenty- years old. They were written in pencil, and first printed in the " Boston Daily Advertiser." Genuine wrath at the pro- posed breaking up of the old frigate impelled the young poet's burning lines : — " And one who listened to the tale of shame, Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides Thy glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides ! From yon lone attic on a summer's mom, Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn." 264 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. CHAPTEE XII. CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. " The country of our fathers ! May its spirit keep it safe and its justice keep it free ! " PUESUING our circuit of the Common, " on hospitable thoughts intent," we ought briefly to pause before the whilom abode of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse. This house may justly claim to be one of the most ancient now remaining in Cambridge, having about it the marks of great age. The strong family resemblance which the dwellings of the period to which this belongs bear to each other renders a minute description of an individual specimen applicable to the greater number. Here are still some relics of the " American Jenner," and some that belonged to an even older inhabitant than he. In one apartment is a clock surmounted by the symboHc cow. At the head of the staircase, in an upper hall, is another clock, with an inscription which shows it to have been presented, in 1 790, to Dr. Waterhouse, by Peter Oliver, former chief justice of the province. The old timekeeper requests its possessor to wind it on Christmas and on the 4th of July. There is also a crayon portrait of the Doctor's mother, done by Allston when an undergraduate at Harvard. The features of Henry Ware, another inhabitant of the house, look benignly down from a canvas on the wall. Some other articles may have belonged to William Vassall, who owned and occupied the house, probably as a summer residence, before the war. Still another occupant was the Eev. Winwood Serjeant, rector of Christ Church. Dr. Waterhouse is best remembered through his labors to introduce in this country vaccination, the discovery of Jenner, which encountered as large a share of ridicule and opposition as inoculation had formerly experienced. Several persons are still living who were vaccinated by Dr. Waterhouse. CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 265 At one time the old barracks at Sewall's Point (Brookline) were used as a small-pox hospital. This was in the day of inoculation, when it was the fashion to send to a friend such missives as the following : — " I wish Lucy was here to have the small-pox. I wish you would persuade her to come here and have it. You can't think how light they have it." The visitor will hnd some relics of the siege, at the State Arsenal on Garden Street, in several pieces of artillery mounted on sea-coast carriages and arranged within the enclosure. These guns were left in Boston by Sir William Howe, and, thanks to the care of General Stone, when that gentleman was adjutant- general of the State, were preserved from the sale of a number of similar trophies as old iron. As the disappearance of the arsenal may soon be expected, it is to be hoped that the State of Massachusetts can afford to keep these old war-dogs which bear the crest and cipher of Queen Anne and the Second George. The largest of the cannon is a 32-pounder. All have the broad arrow, but rust and weather have nearly obliterated the inscriptions impressed at the royal foundry. The oldest legible date is 1687. Besides these, are two di- minutive mortars or cohorns. Within one of the houses are two beautiful brass field-pieces, bearing the crown and lilies of France. Each has its name on the muzzle, — one being the Venus and the other Le Faucon, — and on the breech the imprint of the royal arsenal of Strasburg, with the dates respectively of 1760 and 1761. A further search revealed, hidden away in an obscure corner and covered with lumber, a Spanish piece, which, when brought to light by the aid of some workmen, was found literally covered with engraving, beautifully executed, delineating the Spanish Crown and the monogram of Carlos III. It is inscribed, — "El Uenado. Barcelona J8DE Deceimbre De J767." Inquiry of the proper officials having failed to enlighten us 12 266 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. as to the possession of these cannon by the State, we conclude them to be a remnant of the held artillery sent us by France during the Eevolution. The Spaniard, when struck with a piece of metal, gave out a beautifully clear, melodious ring, as if it contained an alloy of silver, and brought to our mind those old slumberers on the ramparts of Panama, into whose yet molten mass the common people flung their silver reals, and the old dons their pieces of Eight, while the priest blessed the union with the baser metal and consecrated the whole to victory. Whitefield's Elm, under which that remarkable man preached in 1744, formerly stood on a line with its illustrious fellow the Washington Elm, and not far from the turn as we pass from the northerly side of the Common into Garden Street. It ob- structed the way, and the axe of the spoiler was laid at its root two years ago. Dr. Chauncy and Whitefield were not the best friends imaginable. They had mutually written at and preached against each other, and reciprocally soured naturally amiable tempers. The twain accidentally met. " How do you do. Brother Chauncy," says the itinerant laborer. " I am sorry to see you," replies Dr. C. " And so is the devil," retorted Whitefield. In the early part of his life this gentleman happened to be preaching in the open fields, when a drummer was present, who was determined to interrupt the services, and beat his drum in a violent manner in order to drown the preacher's voice. Mr. Whitefield spoke very loud, but the din of the instrument overpowered his voice. He therefore called out to the drummer in these words : — " Friend, you and I serve the two greatest masters existing, but in different callings. Yon may beat up volunteers for King George, I for the Lord Jesus Christ. In God's name, then, don't let us in- terrupt each other ; the world is wide enough for us both, and we may get recruits in abundance." This speech had such effect that the drummer ^vent away in great good-humor, and left the preacher in full possession of the field. CAMBKIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 267 THE WASHINGTON ELM. Many a pilgrim daily wends his way to the spot Washington placed himself at the head of the army. him towers " A goodly elm, of noble girth, That, thrice the human span — While on their variegated course The constant seasons ran — Through gale, and hail, and fierj- bolt, Had stood erect as man." where Above He surveys its crippled branches, swathed in bandages ; marks the scars, where, after holding aloft for a century their out- stretched arms, limb after limb has fallen nerveless and de- cayed ; he pauses to read the inscription lodged at the base of the august fabric, and departs the place in meditative mood, as he would leave a churchyard or an altar. Apart from its association with a great event, there is some- thing impressive about this elm. It is a king among trees ; a 268 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. monarch, native to the soil, whose subjects, once scattered abroad upon the plain before us, have all vanished and left it alone in solitary state. The masses of foliage which hide in a measure its mutilated members, droop gracefully athwart the old highway, and still beckon the traveller, as of old, to halt and breathe awhile beneath their shade. It is not pleasant to view the decay of one of these Titans of primeval growth. It is too sugo;estive of the waning forces of man, and of that •^oo^ "Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history." As a shrine of the Eevolution, a temple not made with hands, we trust the old elm will long survive, a sacred memorial to generations yet to come. We need such monitors in our pubhc places to arrest our headlong race, and bid us calmly count the cost of the empire we possess. We shall not feel the worse for such introspection, nor could we have a more impressive coun- sellor. The memory of the great is with it and around it ; it is indeed on consecrated ground. When the camp was here AVashington caused a platform to be built among the branches of this tree, where he was accus- tomed to sit and survey with his glass the country round. On the granite tablet we read that Under this tree Washington First took command OF THE American Army, July S^, 1775. On the spot Avhere the stone church is erected once stood an old gambrel-roofed house, long the habitat of the Moore family. It was a dwelhng of two stories, with a single chimney stand- ing in the midst, like a tower, to support the weaker fabric. In front were three of those shapely Lombard poplars, erect and prim, like trees on parade. A flower-garden railed it in from the road ; a porch in front, and another at the northerly end, gave ingress according as the condition of the visitor might ^varrant. CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 269 The Moores occupied the house in the memorable year '75, and saw from the windows the cavalcade conducting Washing- ton to his quarters, — this being, as before stated, the high-road from Watertown to Cambridge Common. On the following day the family might have witnessed the ceremonial of formal assumption of command by the cliief, on whom all eyes were fixed and in whom all hopes were centred. Deacon Moore — does he at length rest in peace? — was, while in the flesh, much given to patching and repairing his fences, outbuildings, and the wooden belongings of his domain in general. He bore the character of an upright, downright, conscientious deacon, walking in the odor of sanctity, and was regarded with childish awe by the urchins of the grammar- school whenever he chose to appear abroad. The deacon's house had its inevitable best room, into which heaven's sunshine was never allowed to penetrate, and which was rarely opened except to admit a stranger or hold a funeral service. There are yet such rooms in ]N"ew England, with their stiff, black hair-cloth furniture, their ghostly pictures, and dank, mouldy odors. The carefully varnished mahogany has a smell of the undertaker ; every sense is oppressed, and the soul pleads for release from the funereal chamber. We repeat, there are still such "best rooms " in New England. Upon the decease of Deacon Moore it was discovered that some peculations had been made from the treasury of Dr. Holmes's church. These were laid at the door of the dei)arted deacon. Xow comes the startling revelation. Xight after night the ghost of Deacon Moore revisited his earthly abode, and made night hideous with audible pounding, as if in the act of mending the fence, as was the deacon's wont in life. The affrighted neighbors, suddenly roused from slumber, fearfully drew their curtains aside, and peered forth into the night in quest of the spectre ; but still invisible the wraith pursued its midnight labors. The Jennisons succeeded the Moores, and at length the shade came no more, j^ot many years ago the old house was demol- ished, A vault was discovered underneath the kitchen, walled 270 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. up with rough stone, and in this receptacle were two human skeletons. AVhat tale of horror was here concealed, what deed of blood had caused the disappearance of two human beings from the face of the earth, was never revealed. For an unknown time they had remained sealed up in the manner related, and the later dwellers in the house were totally unconscious of their horrid tenants. A family servant had long slept immediately above these bones, and we marked, even after years had passed away, a strange glitter in his eye as he recalled his couch upon a tomb. The remains were of adult persons, one a female. What motive had consigned them to this mysterious hiding-place is left to conjecture. Was it domestic vengeance, too deadly for the public ear? We answer that two individuals could not have been suddenly taken out of the little community without question. Were they some unwary, tired wayfarers who had sought hospitable entertainment, and found graves instead 1 " But Echo never mocked the human tongue ; Some weighty crime that Heaven could not pardon, A secret curse on that old building hung, And its deserted garden." We have lived to have grave doubts whether, as the old adage says, " Murder will out." Inspect, if you have the stomach for it, our calendar of crime, and mark the array of names which belonged to those whose fate is unknown, and who are there set down like the missing of an army after the battle. The record is startling ; only at the final muster will the victims answer to the fatal list, and speak " Of graves, perchance, untimely scooped At midnight dark and dank." In Spain an ancient custom constrains each passer-by to cast a stone upon the heap raised on the scene of Avayside murder, until at length a monument arises to warn against assassination. The peasant always pauses to repeat an ave to the souls of the slain. On this spot a church has reared its huge bulk, piling CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 271 stone upon stone until its steeple, overtopping the Old Elm, stands a mightier moiniment to the manes of the unknown dead. The events in the life of Washington which have most im- pressed us are, the day when he unsheathed his sword beneath the Old Elm ; the morn of the battle of Trenton ; the address to his despairing, mutinous officers at Newburg ; and the fare- well to his generals at New York. As he was mounting his horse before Trenton, an officer presented him with a despatch. His remark, " What a time to bring me a letter ! " is the sequel of his thoughts, — all had been staked on the issue. When he rose from his bed early in the morning of the meeting at New- burg, he told Colonel Humphreys that anxiety had prevented him from sleeping one moment the preceding night. Unwill- ing to trust to his powers of extempore speaking, Washington reduced what he meant to say to writing, and commenced read- ing it without spectacles, which at that time he used only occa- sionally. He found, however, that he could not proceed with- out them. He stopped, took them out, and as he prepared to place them, exclaimed, " I have grown blind as well as gray in the service of my country." In these instances we see the patriot ; in the adieu to his lieutenants, we see the man. When Washington rode into town after the evacuation of Boston, he was accompanied by Mrs. Washington, who, in accordance with our old-time elegant manners, was styled " Lady " Washington. Upon reaching the Old South, the General wished to enter the building. Shubael Hewes, who at this time kept the keys, lived opposite, and the General there- fore drew up at his door. With his usual courtesy the General inquired after the health of the family, and was told that Mrs. H. had, the day before, been delivered of a fine child. At this Mrs. Washington in- sisted upon seeing the infant, born on an occasion so auspicious as the repossession of Boston by our troops, and it was accord- ingly brought out to the carriage and placed in her lap. The General, alighting, went into the meeting-house, and, ascending to the gallery, where he could fully observe the havoc made by Burgoyne's Light Horse, remarked to the per- 272 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. son who accomi^aiiied him that he was surprised that the Eng- lish, who so reverenced their own places of worship, should have shown such a vandal disposition here. Washington died at sixty-seven ; Knox, by an accident, at fifty-six ; Sullivan, at fifty-five ; Gates, at seventy-eight ; Greene, at forty- four ; Heath, at seventy-seven ; Arnold, at sixty ; and Lee, at fifty-one. Putnam lived to be seventy-two, and Stark to be ninety-three, so that it was commonly said of him, that he was first in the field and last out of it. But other scenes await us, and though we feel that it is good for us to be here, we must reverently bid adieu to the Old Elm. It could perchance tell, were it, like the Dryads of old, loquacious, of the settlers' cabins, when it was a sapHng, of the building of the old wooden seminary, and of the multitudes that have passed and repassed under its verdant arch. The smoke from a hundred rebel camp-fires drifted through its branches and wreathed around its royal dome in the day of maturity, while the drum-beat at the waking of the camp frighted the feathered songsters from their leafy retreats and silenced their matin lays. The huzzas that went up when our great leader bared the weapon he at length sheathed with all honor made every leaf tremulous with joy, and every brown and sturdy limb to wave their green banners in triumph on high. We salute thy patriarchal trunk, thy withered branches, and thy scanty tresses, venerable and yet lordly Elm ! Vale / It is much more a matter of regret than surprise that we have not in aU New England a specimen of antique church architecture worthy of the name. Eigid economy dictated the barn-like structures which were the first Puritan houses of wor- ship. Quaint they certainly were, and not destitute of a cer- tain sombre picturesqueness, with their queer little towers and wonderful weather-vanes ; and even their blackening rafters of prodigious thickness, their long aisles, and carved balustrades, gave modest glimpses of a Rembrandt-like interior. But the beautiful forms of Jones and of Wren were left behind when the Mayflower sailed, and not a single type of Old England's pride of architecture stands on American soil. Simplicity in CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 273 building, in manners, and in dress, as well as in religion, were the base on which our Puritan fathers builded. Had the means not been wanting, it may be doubted whether they would have been apphed to the erection of splendid public edi- fices. The motives which enforced the adherence of the first settlers to the gaunt and unsesthetic structures of their time ceased, in a great measure, to exist a hundred years later, but no re\ival of taste appeared, and even the Episcopalians, with the memories of their glorious Old World temples, fell in with the prevaihng lethargy which characterized the reign of ugliness. Christ Chui'ch stands confronting the Common much as it looked in colonial times. The subscription was originally formed in Boston, the subscribers being either resident or en- gaged in business there. The lot included part of the Common and part of the estate of James Eeed. The building was at first only sixty-five feet in length by forty-five in width, exclu- sive of chancel and tower, but has been much enlarged, to accommodate an increasing parish, — a work which its original plan, and the material of which it is constructed, rendered easy. Peter Harrison, the arcliitect of King's Chapel in Bos- ton, was also the designer of this edifice, and seems to have followed the same plan as for that now venerable structure. Service was first held here on October 15, 1761, the Eev. East Apthorp, whom we have already visited, officiating. Of Dr. Apthorp's father it is written that he studied to mind his own business, — a circumstance so rare as to wellnigh deserve canonization. In the alterations which have been called for the primitive appearance of the building has been, in a great measure, pre- served. The exterior is exceedingly simple, but harmonious, the tower, placed in the centre of the front, giving en- trances on three of its sides. The old bell-tower appeared rather smaller than its successor, and had a pointed roof, sur- mounted, as at present, by a gilded baU. The symbolic cross, which the Puritans hated with superstitious antipathy, did not appear on the pinnacle, out of deference perhaps to the feehng 274 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. which abominated a painted window, a Gothic arch, or chancel rail, as the concomitants of that Ej^iscopacy against which the Cromwellian iconoclasts had waged unrelenting war in every cathedral from Chester to Canterbury. Upon the Declaration of Independence by the Colonies, all the taverns and shops were despoiled of their kingly emblems. A Boston letter of that date says : — " In consequence of Independence being declared here, all the signs which had crowns on them even the Mitre and CroMTi in the organ loft of the chappell were taken down, and Mr. Parker, (who is the Episcopal minister in town) left off praying for the king." The interior of Christ Church is quiet and tasteful, with " Storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religions light." The Corinthian pillars of soKd wood and the original choir are still remaining. And, very hke, the stiff, straight-backed pews are a relic of ancient discomfort. The tablets bearing the Ten Commandments are mementos of Old Trinity in Boston when the wooden edifice was taken down, and have by this means survived their mother church, which the great fire of 1872 left a magnificent ruin. A silver flagon and cup, now in use to celebrate the Holy Communion, were presented by Governor Hutchinson in 1772. These vessels were the property of King's Chapel, Boston, which then received a new service in exchange for the old. They are inscribed as The Gift of K. William and Q Mary To y« ReV^ Samll. Myles For y« use of Theire Majesties' Chappell in N. England. MDCXCIV. Dr. Apthorp was succeeded by Eev. Winwood Serjeant, in whose time, the Revolution having converted his wealthy and influential parishioners into refugees and driven him to seek an asylum elsewhere, the church became a barrack, in which Cap- tain Chester's company, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, was quar- CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 275 tered at the time of Bunker Hill, and after them one of the companies of Southern riflemen. It appears also to have been some time occupied as a guard-house by our forces, rivalling in this respect the wanton usage of the Boston churches by the king's troops. But was not Westminster Abbey occupied by soldiery in 1643 "? General Washington, liimself a churchman, attended a service here, held at the request of Mrs. Washing- ton, on Sunday, the last day of 1775. The religious rite was performed by Colonel William Palfrey, one of the General's aids. Mrs. Gates and Mrs. Custis were also present. There is a tradition that Washington continued to attend service here, but the General was probably too pohtic to have adopted a course so Httle in accord with the views of the army in gen- eral. He attended Dr. Appleton's church at times, and always showed himself possessed of true Christian liberality. On at least one occasion he partook of the Sacrament at the Presby- terian table. His generals were, in this respect, mindful of his example. At the baptism of a son of General Knox, in Boston, Lafayette, a Catholic, and Greene, a Quaker, stood godfathers to the child, Knox himself being a Presbyterian. From 1775 until 1790 Christ Church remained in the con- dition in which the war had involved it. During that time it had neither parish nor rector, but in the latter year it was re- opened, the Eev. Dr. Parker of Trinity, Boston, officiating for the occasion. A chime of tliirteen bells was placed in the belfry in 1860. For many interesting particulars of the history of this church the reader is referred to the historical discourse of Eev. Nicholas Hoppin, the present rector. The remains of the unfortunate Richard Brown, a lieutenant of the Convention troops, were deposited under this church. We have briefly referred to the shooting of this officer on Prospect Hill, as he was riding out with two women. It gave rise to a paper war between General Phillips and General Heath, in which, every advantage being on the side of the latter, he may be said to have come off victorious. An inquest pronounced the shooting justifiable, but the British officers, exasperated to the highest degree by tliis melancholy affair, 276 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. affected to believe themselves the objects of indiscriminate slaughter. It was at the time the church was opened for the interment of Lieutenant Brown, according to the rite of the Church of England, that the damage to the interior took place. Ensign Anbury asserts that the Americans then seized the opportunity "to plunder, ransack, and deface everything they could lay their hands on, destroying the pulpit, reading-desk, and com- munion table, and, ascending the organ-loft, destroyed the bel- lows and broke all the pipes of a very handsome instrument." This organ was made by Snetzler. The burial-place which lies between the churches has re- ceived from the earhest times of our history the ashes of freeman andslave, squire and rustic. In its rejDose mingle the dust of college presidents, soldiers of forgotten wars, and ministers of weUnigh for- gotten doctrines. The ear- liest inscription is in 1653, but the interments antecedent to this date were made, in many cases doubtless, without any graven tablet or other stone than some heavy mass selected at hazard, to protect the remains from beasts of prey. In still other instances the lines traced on the stones have been effaced by natural causes, and even the rude monuments themselves have disappeared beneath the mould. "The slumberer's mound grows fresh and green, Then slowly disappears ; The mosses creep, the gray stones lean, Earth hides his date and years." Among the earlier tenants of God's Acre, as LongfeUow has reverently distinguished it, are Andrew Belcher, the innkeeper, Stephen Day, the printer, and Samuel Green, his successor, Elijah Corlet, master of the " faire Grammar Schoole," Dunster, first President of the College, and Thomas Shepard, minister CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 277 of the church in Cambridge, who succeeded Hooker when he departed to plant the Colony of Connecticut. In their various callings, these were the forefathers of the hamlet ; Old Cam- bridge is really concentrated within this narrow space. The consideration which attached to the position of governor of the College is indicated by the long, pompous Latin inscrip- tions, to be deciphered only by the scholar. Classic lore, as dead to the world in general as is the subject of its eulogium, followed them to their tombs, — '' But for mine owii part it was all Greek to me," — and is there stretched out at full length in many a line of sounding import. Dunster, Chauncy, Leverett, Wads worth, Holyoke, Willard, and Webber lie here awaiting the great Commencement, where Freshman may at once attain the high- est degree, and where College parchment availeth nothing. The disappearance of many of the leaden family-escutcheons has already been accounted for by their conversion into deadly missiles. l!^ecessity, which knows no law, led to these acts of sacrilege, and yet we should as soon think of fashioning the bones of the dead themselves into weapons as rob their tablets of their blazonry. The cavities in which were placed the heraldic emblems are now so many little basins to catch the dews of heaven, — our precious and only Holy Water. The Yassall tomb, a horizontal sandstone slab resting on five upright columns, is one of the most conspicuous objects in the cemetery. On the face of the slab are sculptured the chalice and sun, which may have been borne upon the banner of some gallant French crusader ; for the Yassalls were lords and barons in ancient Guienne. Hospitality and unsullied reputation are in the heraldic conjunction reduced to knightly or kingly sub- jection in the name. Whether amid the sands of Holy Land, the soil of sunny France, or the clay of Cambridge churchyard, the slumberers calmly await the summons of the great King-of- Arms. Near Christ Church is a handsome monument of Scotch gran- ite, erected by the city in 1870 to the memory of John Hicks, 278 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. William Marcy, and Moses Eichardson, buried here, and of Jabez AVyman and Jason Russell, of Menotomy, who fell on the day of Lexington battle. Here is the form of an invitation to a funeral of the olden time. Eev. Mr. Lowell died in London in 1688. " fFor the Reuerend Mr. Mather. These — Reuerend S^, — You are desired to accompany the Corps of Mr Samuell Nowell, minister of the Gospell, of Eminent Note in New England, deceased, from MF Quicks meating place in Bartholemew Close, on Thursday next at two of the clock in the afternoon p'cisely, to the new burying place by the Artillery ground." An epitaph has been described as giving a good character to persons on their going to a new place, who sometimes enjoyed a very bad character in the place they had just left. There is sometliing touching about an unknown grave. EVen the igno- rant crave some memento when they are gone, and the dread of being wholly forgotten on earth is depicted in Gray's incom- parable lines : — " Yet even these bones from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With xmconth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh." Occasionally we see a stone splintered or wantonly defaced. Sometimes an old heraldic device is obliterated by a modern chisel, to give place to some new-comer who has thus, through the agency of a soulless grave-digger, possessed himself of the last heritage of the former proprietor. " I think I s 'e them at their work those sapient trouble tombs." While we are beautifying our newer cemeteries, and making them to " blossom as the rose," our ancient burial-places remain neglected. Cambridge churchyard was long a common thor- oughfare and playground, from which the stranger augured but iU of our reverence for the ashes of our ancestors. The path across the ground is still much frequented, and we marked the absence of all attempt at beautifying the spot. There are CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 279 neither shady walks nor blooming shrubs in a place so public as to meet the eye of every wayfarer. The older stones, half hidden in the tangled grass, threaten total disappearance at no distant day. Pray Heaven all that is left of ancient IS'ewtown does not return to a state of nature. Governor Belcher, one of Harvard's best friends, and the patron of Princeton College, died at his government in New Jersey in 1757. He was much attached to Cambridge, his Alma Mater, and the friends of his youth. In his mil he de- sired to be buried in the midst of those he had loved, and accordingly his remains were deposited in this burying-ground in a tomb constructed a short time previous. It appears that the governor and his bosom friend Judge Eemington had ex- pressed the desire to be buried in one grave, so that when Bel- cher was laid in the tomb the body of his friend, who had preceded him, was disinterred and laid by his side. The mon- ument which the governor had directed to be raised over his resting-place was never erected, and in time the memory of the place of his interment itself passed away with the generation to which he belonged. The tomb became the family vault of the Jennisons. On the decease of Dr. Jennison, it was found to be completely filled with tenants. The old sexton, Brackett, upon being questioned, recollected to have seen at the bottom of the vault the fragments of an old-fashioned coffin, covered mth velvet and studded with gilt nails. This was believed to be that of Governor Belcher, whose granddaughter was the wife of Dr. Jennison. The tomb of Belcher and that of Judge Trowbridge (since known as the Dana tomb) are near the gate- way. In the latter were placed the remains of Washington Allston. There have been funerals in New England with some attempt at feudal pomp. When Governor Leverett died, in 1679, the pageant was rendered as imposing as possible. Though the governor had carefully concealed the fact of his knighthood by Charles II. during his lifetime, the customs of knightly burial were brought into requisition at his interment in Boston. There were bearers, carrying each a banner roll, at the four 280 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. corners of the hearse. After these came the principal gentle- men of the town with the armor of the deceased, the first bear- ing the helmet, the last the spur. The .procession closed with the led horse of the governor followed by banners. The home of Judge Trowbridge was on the ground on which the First Church now stands. Trowbridge, who had been attorney-general, and who was, at the breaking out of the Eevo- lution, judge of the Supreme Court, resigned soon after the battle of Lexington, and retired to Byfield, where he enjoyed for a time the companionship of his pupil, Theophilus Parsons, whose character he no doubt impressed with his own stamp. Judge Trowbridge presided at the trial of Captain Preston with a fairness and ability that commanded respect. He was well in years when the Eevolution burst forth in full vigor, and al- though offered a safe conduct, declined to leave the country, saying, " I have nothing to fear from my countrymen." He returned to Cambridge, and died here in 1793. A little time after the battle of Lexington Judge Trowbridge stated to Eev. John Eliot that, " it was a most unhappy thing that Hutchinson was ever chief justice of our court. What Otis said, 'that he would set the province in flames, if he perished by the fire,' has come to pass." At the last court held under the charter, Peter Oliver was chief justice, and Ed- mund Trowbridge, Foster Hutchinson, William Cushing, and William Brown were the judges. Of these, Cushing was the only one who afterwards appeared on the bench. " The scene is changed ! No green arcade, No trees all ranged arow." The old Brattle house, on the street of that name, is the first you meet with after passing the huge wooden hive, formerly a hotel under the famihar designation of the Brattle House, but now dedicated to the art preservative of all arts. The buildings of the University Press occupy a part of the Brattle estate, which was once the most noted in Cambridge for the elegance of its grounds and the walk laid out by the proprietor, known in its day as Brattle's Mall. Miss Ruth Stiles, afterwards the CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 281 mother of Dr. Gannett of Boston, penned some beautiful lines to tliis promenade : — " Say, noble artist, by what power inspired Thy skilful hands such varied scenes compose ? At whose command the sluggish soil retir'd, And from the marsh this beauteous mall arose ? " The walk, which once conducted to the river's side, was the favorite promenade for the nymphs and swains of Old Cam- bridge, as on a moonlit eve they wandered forth / . i^ to whisper their vows, chant a love-ditty under v| ^ v' the shadows of the listening trees, or idly cast ^^J-^ii^ a pebble into the current of the shimmering stream. Besides the mall, was a marble grotto in which gurgled forth a spring, where 'love- draughts of singular potency were quaffed, en- chaining, so 't was said, the wayward fancies of the coquette, or giving heart of grace to bashful wooer. Eeader, the spring has coyly with- brattle. drawn beneath the turf, though its refreshing pool is indicated by a ruined arch nigh the wall of the enclosure j the mall, too, is gone, but still, perchance, *' Light-footed fairies guard the verdant side And watch the turf by Cynthia's lucid beam." The elder Thomas Brattle was an eminent merchant of Bos- ton, and a principal founder of Brattle Street Church. From him, also, that street took its name. He was the brother of William, the respected minister of Cambridge. William Brattle, the tory brigadier, went into exile in the royalist hegira, de- serting his house and all his worldly possessions. The soldiery were not long in scenting out and making spoil of the good liquors contained in the fugitive's cellars, until this house, with others, was placed under guard, and the effects of every sort taken in cliarge for the use of the Colonial forces. Thomas Brattle, the son of the brigadier, was the author of the improvements which made his grounds the most celebrated in New England. He left the country in 1775 for England, 282 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. but returned before the close of the war, and had the good for- tune to obtain the removal of his political disabilities. His character was amiable, and his pursuits prompted by an en- lightened benevolence and hospitality. One of the last acts of his life was to erect a bath at what was called Brick Wharf, for the benefit of the students of the University, many of whom had lost their lives while bathing in the river. Brattle was an enthusiastic lover of horticulture, and devoted much of his time to the embellishment of liis grounds. General Mifflin occupied the Brattle mansion while acting as quartermaster-general to our forces. Mifflin and Dr. Jonathan Potts, the distinguished army-surgeon of the Revolution, married sisters. The former was small in stature, very active and alert, — qualities which he displayed in the Lechmere's Point affair, — but withal somewhat bustling, and fond of telling the sol- diers he would get them into a scrape. His manners were popular, and he appeared every inch a soldier when on duty. Despite the cloud which gathered about Mifflin's connection with the conspiracy to depose Washington, he nobly exerted himself to reinforce the wreck of the grand army at the close of the campaign of 1776. Mrs. John Adams paid a visit to Major Mifflin's in Decem- ber, 1775, to meet Mrs. Morgan, the wife of Dr. Church's suc- cessor as director-general of the hospital. In the company were Generals Gates and Lee. Tea was drank mthout restraint. " General Lee," says Mrs. Adams, " was very urgent for me to tarry in town and dine with him and the ladies present at Hobgob- lin Hall, but I excused myself. The General was determined that I should not only be acquainted with him, but with his companions too, and therefore placed a chair before me, into which he ordered Mr. Spada to mount and present his paw to me for better acquamt- ance. I could not do otherwise than accept it. ' That, Madam,' says he, ' is the dog which Mr. has made famous. } » Mrs. Adams further says : — "You hear nothing from the ladies but about Major Mifflin's eas} address, politeness, complaisance, etc. 'T is well he has so agreeable CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDxMARKS. 283 a lady at Philadelphia. They know nothing about forts, intrench- ments, etc., when they return ; or it" they do, they are all forgotten and swallowed up in his accomplishments." It is evident that the Major was a gallant cavalier, and would have been called in our day a first-rate ladies' man. Margaret Fuller was at one time a resident of this house, now the property of Samuel Batchelder, Esq. To understand what was this old Colonial highway in which we are now sauntering, contract its breadth, expanded at the cost of the contiguous estates ; rear again the magnifi- cent trees sacrificed to the improvement, save here and there a noble specimen spared at the earnest intercession of the near proprietors, or where protected, like the "spreading chestnut- tree," by the poet's art, — would that he might dedicate his muse to every one of these mighty forest guardians ! — some relics of the dispersed sylvan host yet clings to the soil ; carry the boundaries of Thomas Brattle to those of the Vassalls; obliterate the modern villas, with their neutral tints and chateau roofs ; restore the orchards, the garden glacis, the fra- grant lindens, and cool groves; and you have an inkling of the state of the magnificos of " forty-five " and of the most impor- tant artery of old Massachusetts Bay. Passing underneath the horse-chestnut, by whose stem Long- fellow has located the village smithy, we ought to pause a moment before the long-time dwelling of Judge Story, — a plain, three-story brick house, with small, square upper win- dows, and veranda along its eastern front. This house was built about 1800, and in it Story died, and from it he was buried. The old Judge was wont, they say, when weighty matters occupied him, to take his hat into his study, where he remained secure from intrusion ; while the servant, not seeing his head- covering in its accustomed place in the hall, would say to comers of every degree that he was not at home. " In the summer afternoons he left his library towards twilight, and might always be seen by the passer-by sitting with his family 284 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. under the portico, talking, or reading some liglit pamphlet or news- paper ; oftener surrounded by friends, and making the air ring with his gay laugh. This, with the interval occupied by tea, would last until nine o'clock. Generally, also, the summer afternoon was varied, three or four times a week in fine weather, by a drive with my mother of about an hour through the surrounding country in an open chaise. At about ten or half past ten he retired for the night, never varying a half-hour from this time." * William W. Story, the son of Judge Story, passed his college life in this house, was married in it, and here also made his first essays in art. The beautiful statue of the jurist in the chapel of Mount Auburn is the work of his son's hands. Judge Story's widow remained but a little time in the house after her husband's decease. Edward Tuckerman, professor of botany at Amherst, lived here some time, a bachelor ; and Judge AVilliam Kent, son of the celebrated chancellor, resided here while pro- fessor in the Law School. In his time gayety prevailed in the old halls, often Med with the elite of the town, and sometimes distinguished by the presence of the eminent commentator him- self. In this house, could we but make its walls voluble, we might write the annals of bench and bar. It stands amid the frailer structures stanch as the Constitution, while its old-time, learned inhabitant has long since obeyed the summons of the Supreme Court of last resort, where there is no more conflict of laws. Ash Street is the name now given to the old highway lead- ing to the river's side, where formerly existed an eminence known as Windmill HiU, later the site of Brattle's bathing- house, from which the way was known as Bath Lane. The miU is mentioned as standing in 1719, and, in all probability, occupied the same gTound as the earlier mill of the first plant- ers, removed in 1G32 to Boston, "because it would not grind but with a westerly wind." The firm ground extends here quite to the river, so that boats freighted with corn could unload at the mill. Down this lane of yore trudged many a weary rustic with his grist for the mill. * Jiidge Story's Memoir, by his son. CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 285 The house, now the residence of Samuel Batchelder, Esq., was built about 1700, and may claim the respect due to a hale, hearty old age. It was originally of rough-cast, filled in with brick. The east front, unfortunately injured by fire, was re- stored to its ancient aspect, except that the dormer windows of that part have not been replaced. The brown old mansion incloses three sides of a square, and offers a much more picturesque view from the gardens than from the street. On the west is the court- yard and carriage entrance, paved with beach pebbles, while the east front opens upon the spacious grounds, now somewhat shrunken on the side of the highway by its enlargement. During this improve- ment the low brick wall on Brattle Street, as it now appears on Ash Street, was taken down, and replaced belcher. by one more elegant. The recessed area at the back has a cool, monastic look, with shade and climbing vines, — a place for meditative fancies. The garden is thickly studded with trees, shrubbery, and flowers, as was the dreary waste once Thomas Brattle's, during the time of that \ right worthy horticulturist. At the extremity of Mr. Batchelder's garden remains of what were be- lieved to have belonged to the early fortifications were discovered. The situation coincides with the location as fixed by Eev. Dr. Holmes. The estate came, in 1717, into the possession of Jonathan Belcher while he was yet a merchant and had not donned the cares of GOVERNOR BELCHER. 286 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. office. He was one of the most elegant gentlemen of his time in manners and appearance, — a fact for which his portrait will vouch. While governor he once made a state entry into Hampton Falls, where the Assemblies of Massachusetts Bay and l^ew Hampshire were in session on the vexatious question of the dividing hne between the governments. We append a contemporary pasquinade on the event : — ** Dear Paddy, you ne'er did behold such a sight As yesterday morning was seen before night. You in all your born days saw, nor I did n't neither, So many fine horses and men ride together. At the head the lower house trotted two in a row, Then aU the higher house pranc'd after the low; Then the Govei'nor's coach gallop'd on like the wind, And the last that came foremost were troopers behind ; But I fear it means no good to your neck nor mine, For they say 't is to fix a right place for the line." The mansion afterwards became the property of Colonel John Yassall, the elder, whose sculptured tombstone we have seen in the old churchyard. This gentleman conveys the estate (of seven acres) to his brother, Major Henry, an officer in the militia, who died in this house in 1769. The wife of Major Vassall, 7iee Penelope Eoyall, left her home, at the breaking out of hostilities, in such haste, it is said, that she carried along with her a young companion, whom she had not time to re- store to her friends. Such of her property as was serviceable to the Colony forces was given in charge of Colonel Stark, while the rest was allowed to pass into Boston. The barns and outbuildings were used for the storage of the Colony forage, cut with whig scythes in tory pastures. It is every way Hkely that the Widow Vassall's house at once became the American hospital, as Thacher tells us it was near headquarters, and no other house was so near as this. There is httle doubt that it was the residence, as it certainly was the prison, of that inexplicable character. Dr. Benjamin Church, whose defection was the first that the cause of America had experienced. Suspicion fell upon Church before the middle of September. He was summoned to headquarters on the evening CAMBRIDGE COMMON AND LANDMARKS. 287 of September 13, before a council of the generals, where he probably learned, for the first time, that he was the object of distrust. When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly confounded, and made no attempt to vindicate himself. A treasonable letter, written in cipher, which he was attempt- ing to send to his brother in Boston, by the hands of his mis- tress, was intercepted, and disclosed Church's perfidy. The letter itself, when deciphered, did not contain any intelligence of importance, but the discovery that one until then so high in the esteem of his countrjnnen was engaged in a clandestine cor- respondence with the enemy was deemed sufficient evidence of guilt. He was arrested and confined in a chamber looking upon Brattle Street. The middle window in the second story will indicate the apartment of his detention, in which he em- ployed some of his leisure in cutting on the door of a closet, "B Church jr" There the marks now remain, their significance awaiting a recent interpretation by Mrs. James, to whom they were long familiar, without suspicion of their origin. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and two overlooking the area on the south. The doctor was called before a council of war, consisting of all the major-generals and brigadiers of the army, besides the adjutant-general. General Washington presiding. This tribunal decided his acts to have been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of a fife and drum, to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. It would be difficult to produce a more remarkable instance of special plead- ing than Church's defence. The galleries were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the Doctor arraigned. He was adjudged guilty and expelled. His subsequent confinement by order of the Continental Congi-ess, his permission to depart the country, and his mysterious fate are matters of liistory. A letter from Dr. Church's brother, to which the treasonable 288 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. document was a reply, contains the following among other re- markable passages, — it refers to Bunker Hill : — "What says the psalm-singer and Johnny Dupe to fightiag British troops now ? They are at Philadelphia, I suppose plotting more mischief, where I hear your High Mightiness has been Ambas- sador extraordinary : take care of your nob, Mr. Doctor ; remember your old friend, the orator ; * he will preach no more sedition." What Paul Eevere says, together with other corroborative evidence, leaves but little doubt that Dr. Church Avas in the pay of General Gage. Eevere's account is, in part, as fol- lows : — " The same day I met Dr. Warren. He was president of the Committee of Safety. He engaged me as a messenger to do the out of doors business for that committee ; which gave me an opportunity of being frequently with them. The Friday evening after, about sunset, I was sitting with some, or near all that committee in theu^ room, which was at Mr. Hastings's house in Cambridge. Dr. Church all at once started up. ' Dr. Warren,' said he, ' I am deter- mined to go into Boston to-morrow.' (It set them all a staring.) Dr. Warren replied, ' Are you serious, Dr. Church ? They will hang you if they catch you in Boston.' He replied, ' I am serious, and am determined to go at all adventures.' After a considerable con- versation Dr. Warren said, ' If you are determined, let us make some business for you.' They agreed that he should go to get medi- cine for their and our wounded officers." * Warren. HEADQUARTEES OF THE ARMY. 289 CHAPTEE XIII. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. " Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned coiintry-seat. " EXCEPT Mount Vernon, the shrine at which every Amer- ican means some day to render homage, the house now the residence of Mr. Longfellow is probably the best known of any in our country. It is not to be wondered at that the foot- steps of many pilgrims stray within the pleasant enclosure. The house has often been described, and is an object famihar to thousands who have visited it, and who would regret its disappearance as a public misfortune. A score of years gone by the writer accompanied a gentleman from a distant State, then accredited to a foreign court, to view the historic localities of Old Cambridge. " Ah ! " said the visitor, as we paused before this mansion, " there is no need to account for the jDoet's inspiration." Be it our task, then, after repeating something of its history, to stand at the entrance door, and, like Seneschal of old, announce in succession those who claim our service in the name of master of the historic edifice. Standing at some distance back from the street, the mansion is in the style of an English country house of a hundred and fifty years ago. It is built of wood without, walled up with brick within, giving strength to the building and comfort to its inhabitants. The approach is by a walk rising over two slight terraces by successive flights of sandstone steps. The first of these terraces is bordered by a neat wooden balustrade. Four pilasters with Corinthian capitals ornament the front of the mansion ; one standing at each side of the entrance, while others relieve the corners. A pediment raised above the line of the cornice rests 13 s 290 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. upon the central pilasters, and gives character to the design. A dormer window jutting out on either side of the pediment, a pair of substantial chimneys, and a balustrade at the summit of the roof complete the external aspects of the house. The verandas seen on either side are the taste of a modern pro- prietor. Yellow and white, the poet's colors, are the outward dress which has been applied to this house since a time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. One day we stood on the broad stone slab before this door. We had time to mark the huge brass knocker which seemed to court a giant's grasp, but, Vulcan ! what a lock was its fellow on the other side. The key might have been forged at the smithy of a Cyclop, and would have done no discredit to the girdle of the keeper of the Bastile or of the White Tower. It was probably the poet's mental stature that made us ex- pect to see a taller man. His handsome white hair, worn long ; his beard, which threescore and six completed years have blanched, gave him a venerable appearance by no means con- sistent with his mental and bodily activity. A warm, even ruddy complexion ; an eye bright and expressive ; a genial smile, which at once allays any well-founded doubts the in- truder might entertain of his reception, make Mr. Longfellow's a countenance to be remembered. Looking into that face, we felt at no loss to account for the beauty, purity, and high moral tone which pervade the poet's productions. An apparent aroma of fragrant tobacco indicated that, like Tennyson, our host found solace in the weed. The large front room, one of four into which the first floor is divided, and which opens at your right hand as you enter the hall, is re- served by the poet for his study, and here, among his books, antique busts, and other literary paraphernalia, the magician weaves his spell. The Avindows look upon the lawn and walk by which you approach the house. The grounds are embellished with shrub- bery and dominated by some line old elms ; but the eye is soon engaged with, and lingers on, the broad expanse of meadow through which the river winds unseen, and whose distant HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 291 margin is fringed with the steeples and house-tops of Brighton. Beyond are the rounded hills and pleasant dales of Brookline, and from the upper windows you may see, on a clear day, the blue masses of Milton Hills. Thus it looked to the early pro- prietor and to Washington, and thus the present occupant, by the recovery of a large portion of the original acres, perpetuates at once dwelling and landscape. Lighting a taper, our host first led the way to the cellars, with timely caution to take heed of the solid timbers overhead, as we descended the stairs. He made us remark the thickness of these beams and of the outer walls of the building proper. In extent and loftiness these cellars were not unworthy some old convent in which many a butt of good Ehenish — unless we do them foul wrong — has consoled the jolly friars for days of mortification in downright bacchanalian wassail. We passed beneath arches where light was never meant to enter, for fear of offending the deep, rich glow of the port, or the pale lustre of the Madeira, — recesses out of which we almost expected to see the phantom of the Colonial proprietor appear and challenge our footsteps. The house is spacious and elegant throughout. From the hall of entrance the staircase mnds to the upper floor, giving an idea of loftiness such as you experience in looking up at the vault of a church. The principles of ventilation were respected by the builder in a manner which savors strongly of a West- Indian life. N'ot a sign of weakness or decay is apparent in the woodwork ; wainscots, panels, capitals, and cornices are in excellent taste and skilfully executed. The old proprietor's farm, for such it was, at first consisted of a hundred and fifty acres or more. The Sewall mansion, now that of John Brewster, Esq., was then the nearest on that side, and at the back the grounds embraced the site of the Ob- servatory, where formerly stood a summer-house. From this hill the waters of a spring were conducted to the house by an aqueduct, still visible where it entered the foundation-wall. The greenhouses were formerly on the spot where the new dor- mitory is now being erected ; the capacious barn is still stand- 292 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. ing on the west side of the house. K'othing seems to have been wanting to render the estate complete in all its appoint- ments. The house was probably erected in 1759 by Colonel John Vassall, the same at whose tomb we have paid a passing visit. His family was a distinguished one, both in Old and New England. In King's Chapel, Boston, the visitor may see a beautiful mural monument, commemorative of the virtues, loy- alty, and sufierings of Samuel Vassall, a member, and one of the Assistants, of the Massachusetts Company. The escutcheon displays the same emblems as the horizontal slab in Cambridge churchyard. The crest is a ship with the sails furled, adopted, no doubt, to honor the services of that brave John Vassall who fought with Howard, Drake, and Hawkins, against the armada of Philip II. The Vassalls were from Cambridge in Old Eng- land. There could be no fitter name for so stanch a loyalist as Col- onel John Vassall. It is said he would not use on his arms the family device, " Soejite -pro rege^ sem-per 2wo repuhlica.^' He took an active part against the whigs in the struggles prelimi- nary to active hostilities, and early in 1775 became a fugitive under the protection of the royal standard. In Boston he occu- pied the time-honored mansion of the Faneuils, where he, no doubt, often saw his fellow-tories assembled around his board. His Cambridge and Boston estates were both confiscated, and not the least curious of the freaks which fortune played in those troublous times was the occupation of the first-named house by Washington, while that of William Vassall, in Boston, after- wards the residence of Gardiner Greene, was for some time the lodgings of Sir William Howe, and also of Earl Percy. Col- onel Vassall retired to England, where he died in 1797, after eating a hearty dinner. Having witnessed the hurried exit of the first proprietor, it becomes our duty to throw wide the portal and admit a bat- talion of Colonel John Glover's amphibious Marblehead regi- ment. As the royalist went out the republicans came in, and the halls of the haughty tory resounded with merriment or HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 293 echoed to the tread of many feet. Colonel John the first gave place to Colonel John the second. Truth compels us to add that the man of Marblehead has left a more enduring record than the marble of the A^assall. The little colonel, though small in stature, was as brave as CiBsar. His patriotism was full proof. Besides his service at the siege of Boston, his regiment brought off the army in safety after the disastrous affair of Long Island, where they showed that they could handle ashen as well as steel blades. He was a great favorite with Lee, with whom he served two campaigns. It was Glover who, after the ever-memorable passage of the Delaware, made the discovery that the thickly falling sleet had rendered the fire-arms useless. Meaning glances were exchanged among the little group who heard the iU-omened announce- ment. " What is to be done 1 " exclaimed Sullivan. " Nothing is left you but to push on and charge," replied St. Clair. Sul- livan, stiU doubtful, sent Colonel William Smith, one of his aids, to inform General Washington of the state of his troops, and that he could depend upon nothing but the bayonet. General Washington replied to Colonel Smith in a voice of thunder, " Go back, sir, immediately, and tell General Sullivan to go 071 ! " Colonel Smith said he never saw a face so awfully sublime as Washington's when he spoke these words. Knox, whose superhuman efforts on that night to get his ar- tillery across the Delaware entitle him to lasting praise, pays this tribute to the brave men of Glover's command : — " I could wish that they [he was speaking to the Massachusetts Legislature] had stood on the banks of the Delaware Elver in 1776, on that bitter night when the commander-in-chief had drawn up his little army to cross it, and had seen the powerful current bearing onward the floating masses of ice which threatened destruction to whosoever should venture upon its bosom. I wish that, when this occurrence threatened to defeat the enterprise, they could have heard that distinguished warrior demand, ' Wlio will lead us on?' and seen the men of Marblehead, and ^Marblehead alone, stand for- ward to lead the army along its perilous path to unfading glories and honors in the achievements of Trenton." 294 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Glover was himself a fisherman and wore a short round- jacket like his men. Two of his captains, John Selman and Nicholson Broughton, engaged in the first naval expedition of the Eevolution. A third, William Raymond Lee, finally became Glover's successor in the command of the regiment. Glover had been out with the Marblehead militia when Leslie attempted to force his way into Salem. The regiment reported to General Ward on the 22d of June, 1775. Graydon, whose illiberal and sweeping abuse of the New England troops renders his praise the more remarkable, makes an exception in favor of Glover's regiment, which he saw in New York in 1776. He says : — " The only exception I recollect to have seen to these miserably constituted bands from New England was the regiment of Glover from Marblehead. There was an appearance of discipline in this corps ; the officers seemed to have mixed with the world, and to un- derstand what belonged to their station. But even in this regiment there were a number of negroes, which, to persons unaccustomed to such associations, had a disagreeable, degrading effect." Glover served in the Northern army in the campaign against Burgoyne. He commanded the troops drawn up to receive the surrender, and, with Whipple, escorted the forces of the Con- vention to Cambridge. An excellent disciplinarian, his regi- ment was one of the best in the army. But the Provincial Congress has ordered the house cleared for a more illustrious tenant, and our sturdy men of Essex must seek another loca- tion. On the 7th of July they received orders to encamp. In February, 1776, the regimental headquarters were at Brown's tavern, while the regiment itself lay encamped in an enclosed pasture to the north of the Colleges. From the records of the Provincial Congress we learn that Joseph Smith was the custodian of the Vassall farm, which fur- nished considerable supplies of forage for our army. It was at the time when the haymakers were busy in the royalist's mead- ows that Washington, entering Cambridge with his retinue, first had his attention fixed by the mansion which for more than eight months became his residence. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 295 "Once, ah ! once, within these walls, One whom memory oft recalls, The father of his country dwelt ; And yonder meadows broad and damp, The fires of the besieging camp Encircled with a burning belt." Washington probably took possession of this house before the middle of July, as he himself records, under date of July 15, that he paid for cleansing the premises assigned him, which had been occupied by the Marblehead regiment. The Com- mittee of Safety had ordered it vacated early in May for their own use, but there is no evidence that they ever sat there. Whatever re- lates to the per- sonality of Wash- ington will re- main a matter of interest to the latest times. The pencils of the Peales, of Trum- bull, Stuart, of Wertmiiller, and others have de- picted him in ear- ly manhood, m mature age, and the decline of life , BALL S WASHINGTON STATUE. while the chisel of a Canova, a Houdon, and a Chantrey have famiharized Ameri- cans with his commanding figure and noble cast of features : — A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal To give the world assurance of a man." 296 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. One of Rocliambeau's generals has left by far the most satis- factory account of Washington's outward man : — " His stature is noble and lofty, he is well made and exactly proportioned ; his physiognomy mild and agreeable, but such as to render it impossible to speak particularly of any of his features, so that in quitting him you have only the recollection of a fine face. He has neither a grave nor a familiar air, his brow is sometimes marked with thought, but never with inquietude ; in inspuing re- spect he inspires confidence, and his smile is always the smile of benevolence." Says another : — " With a person six feet two inches in stature, expanded, muscular, of elegant proportions and unusually graceful in all its movements, — his head moulded somewhat on the model of the Grecian an- tique ; features sufficiently prominent for strength or comeliness, — a Roman nose and large blue eyes deeply thoughtful rather than lively, — with these attributes the appearance of Washington was striking and august. Of a fine complexion, he was accounted when young one of the handsomest of men." That Washington wore his famous blue and buff uniform on his arrival at Cambridge there can be as little doubt as that he appeared in his seat in Congress in this garb ; and, as these became the colors of the famed Continental army, their origin becomes a subject of inquiry. The portrait of the elder Peale, painted in 1772, represents Washington in the uniform of the provincial troops, which, for good cause, was varied from that of the British line. In the former corps the coat was blue faced with crimson, in the lat- ter scarlet faced with blue, — colors which had been worn since their adoption in the reign of Queen Anne. To continue Peale's delineation of Colonel Washington's uniform, the coat and waist- coat, out of which is seen protruding the " order of march," are both edged with silver lace, with buttons of white metal. An embroidered lilac-colored scarf falls from the left shoulder across the breast and is knotted at the right hip, while sus- pended by a blue ribbon from his neck is the gorget bearing the arms of Virginia, then and afterwards a distinctive emblem. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 297 as the fusee he carries by a sling was the companion of every officer. This was the very dress he wore on the day of Brad- dock's signal defeat. Blue than which no color can be more soldierly — had its precedent, not only in the British Horse Guards, but in the French and other armies of Continental Europe. It is to Sweden, however, that we must look for the origin of the cele- brated blue and buff, as we find the Koyal Swedes wearing it as early as 1715. In 1789 they were attired in the very cos- tume of the Continentals. The General wore rich epaulettes and an elegant smaU sword. He also carried habitually a pair of screw-barreUed, silver- mounted pistols, with a dog's head carved on the handle. It also appears that he sometimes wore the light-blue ribbon across his breast, between coat and waistcoat, which is seen in Peale's portrait painted for Louis XYI. This badge, which gave rise to the mistaken idea that Washington was a Marshal of France, was worn in consequence of an order issued in July, 1775, to make the persons of the generals known to the army. By the same order the major and brigadier generals were to wear pink ribbons, and the aides-de-camp green. An old print of General Putnam exhibits this peculiarity. Cockades of different colors were assigned by orders in 1776 as distinguishing badges for officers. Peale's portrait of Colonel Washington, together with other valuable paintings at Arlington House, were removed by Mrs. Lee when she left her residence in May, 1861. Although con- siderably injured by the rough usage of war times, every lover of art will be glad to know that they have been preserved. The gorget which has been mentioned as having been worn by Washington when he sat to the elder Peale is now preserved as a precious relic in the Quincy family, of Boston. A pair of epaulettes worn by the General at Yorktown, together with some other mementos, are in the cabinets of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The commander-in-chief, upon taking possession of his head- quarters, selected the southeast chamber for his sleeping-apart- 13* 298 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. ment. What vigils he kept here in the silent watches of the night, what invocations were made for Providential aid and guidance, when, escaping from the sight of men, he unbosomed himself and bowed down beneath the weight of his responsi- bilities, the walls alone might tell. " Yes, within this very room, Sat he in those hours of gloom, Weary both in heart and head." Washington was very exact in his habits. It is said he always shaved, dressed himself, summer and winter, and an- swered his letters by candle-light. Nine o'clock was his hour for retiring. The front room underneath the chamber, already mentioned as the poet's study, was appropriated by the General for a simi- lar purpose. This opens at the rear into the library, an apart- ment occupied in the day of the great Virginian by his military family. In the study the ample autograph was appended to letters and orders that have formed the framework for contem- porary history ; the march of Arnold to Quebec, the new or- ganization of the Continental army, the occupation of Dorches- ter Heights, and the simple but graphic expression of the final triumph of patient endurance in the following order of the day : — " Head Quarters, 17th March 1776. " Farole Boston. Coimtersign *S^. Patrick." " The regiments under marching orders to march to-morrow morning. Brigadier of the Day, General Sullivan. " By His Excellency's Conunand." Here, too, our General rose to his full stature when, in his ftimous letter to General Gage, he gave utterance to the feelings of honest resentment called forth by the supercilious declara- tions of that officer in language which must have stung the Briton to the quick : — " You affect, sir, to despise all rank not derived from the same source with your own. I cannot conceive one more honorable than that which flows from the uncorrupted choice of a brave and free people, — the purest source and original fountain of all power." HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. . 299 Napoleon, when in exile at St. Helena, remarked to an Englishman while arguing against the foolish attempt to make him relinquish the title of Emperor, " Your nation called Wash- ington a leader of rebels for a long time, and refused to acknowl- edge either him or the constitution of his country ; but his successes obliged them to change and acknowledge both." The phrase of " military family," in which was included the entire staff of the General, originated in the British army. The custom of embracing the suite of a general in his household, and of constituting them in effect members of his family, was not practised in the armies of Continental Europe. Washing- ton was fortunately able to support the charge of this practice, as well as to control the incongruous elements sometimes grouped about his person. Of his first staff. Gates, the head, became soured, and, fancying his position far beneath his merits, a restraint soon appeared in his demeanor. Mifflin, the first aid, afterwards governor of Pennsylvania, became involved in the Conway cabal ; and Eeed, the General's secretary and most trusted friend, became at one time so doubtful of the success of the American arms, that he is said to have received a British pro- tection. But Reed's patriotism was proof against a most artful attempt to bribe liim through the agency of a beautiful woman. AYhen assured of her purpose, he addressed her in these words : " I am not worth purchasing, but such as I am, the king of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it." Trumbull, the 23ainter, who was made an aid in the early days of the siege, confesses his inability to sustain the exigencies of his position. He relates that the scene at headquarters was altogether new and strange to him. " I now," he says, " found myself in the family of one of the most distinguished men of the age, surrounded at his table by the princi- pal officers of the army, and in constant intercourse with them ; it was further my duty to receive company and do the honors of the house to many of the first people of the country of both sexes. I soon found myself unequal to the elegant duties of my situation, and was gratified when Mr. Edmund Randolph (afterwards Secretary of State) and Mr. Baylor arrived from Virginia, and were named aids- du-canq), to succeed Mr. Miftiin and myself" 300 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. George Baylor, who Washington said was no penman, hav- ing expressed a desire to go into the artillery with Knox, the General appointed Moylan and Palfrey to fill the jjlaces of the former and of liandolph, who Avas obliged to leave Cambridge suddenly on his own affairs. Baylor is the same officer who, as colonel of dragoons, was surprised and made prisoner by General Grey at Tappan, with the loss of the greater part of his men inhumanly butchered while demanding quarter. Moy- lan, a gay, rollicking Irishman, was appointed commissary-gen- eral, — a place he soon left for the line. Harrison, who succeeded Reed as secretary, lacked grasp for his multifarious duties, though he continued in the staff until 1781. David Hum- phreys, the soldier-poet, was, for his gallantry at Yorktown, selected to carry the captured standards to Congress, as Baylor liad carried the news of victory at Trenton, — Humphreys had first been aid to Putnam. Alexander Hamilton, who served Washington as a member of his military family with singular ability, left the General in anger on account of a scolding he had received from him for some delay in sending off despatches at Yorktown. Tench Tilghman was a dashing cavalier and an excellent scribe. He served Washington nearly five years, during which he was in every action in which the main army was engaged. General Lloyd Tilghman, a descendant, who fought on the Confederate side in the late Avar, Avas cap- tured at Fort Henry, and confined for some time at Fort War- ren, in Boston harbor. x4.t the festival of the Society of the C'incinnati in 1872, a representative of the Patriot officer Avas present. While loitering in the apartments devoted to official business, it may not be uninteresting to refer to the chirography of the leaders of the Continental army, most of Avhom handled the sAvord and pen equally well. Washington's characters Avere large, round, and never appear to have been penned in haste. Knox Avrote indifferently when he entered the army, but his hand soon became straggling and difficult to decipher, his mind being so much more active than his pen that his MS. is filled with interlineations. Greene A\Tote a fair, clear, running-hand ; HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 301 liis language couched in good, terse phrase. Wayne, far from being the boor that Andre's epic makes him, not only held a fluent, but a graphic pen, as \vitness his despatch : — "■ Stoney Point, 16tli July, 1779, — 2 o'clock, a. m. " Dear General, — The fort and garrison, with Colonel Johnston, are ours. Our officers and men behaved like men who are deter- mined to be free. Yours most sincerely, " Ant^ Wayne." Gates ^vrote a handsome, round hand ; so did Schuyler, St. Clair, Sidlivan, and Stirling. Lee took rather more care of his handwriting than of his dress ; his characters are bold and legible. Lafayette wrote like a Frenchman. Steuben's and Chastellux's were rather an improvement on Lafayette's diminu- tive strokes. Whatever may be said of Washington's Fabian policy, it is (•ertain the pugnacious element was not wanting in his charac- ter. He wished to carry Boston by assault, but was overruled by his council ; he wished to fight at Germantown, with an army just beaten ; and again at Monmouth against the advice of a council of war, with Lee at its head. In the latter battle, where he was more than half defeatad, disaster became victory under his eye and voice. Here he is said to have been fear- fully aroused, appearing in an unwonted and terrible aspect. An eyewitness of one of those rare but awful phenomena, a burst of ungovernable \vrath from Washington, related that on seeing the misconduct of General Lee, he lost all control of himself, and, casting his hat to the ground, stamped upon it in his rage. " In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war ; Occasion needs but fan them and they hlaze." This battle has always reminded us of Marengo, where De- saix, arriving on the field to find the French army beaten and retreating, calmly replied to the question of the First Consul, " The battle is lost ; but it is only two o'clock, we have time to gain another." But Lee was not Desaix, and the chief, not the lieutenant, saved the day. Lafayette always said Wasliing- ton was superb at Monmouth. 302 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Another incident, perfectly authentic, exhibits Washington's personal magnetism and prowess. It is related that one morn- ing Colonel Glover came in haste to headquarters to announce that his men were in a state of mutiny. On the instant the General arose, and, mounting his horse, which was always kept ready saddled, rode at full gallop to the mutineers' camp, ac- companied by Glover and Hon. James Sullivan. Washington, arrived on the spot, found himself in presence of a riot of seri- ous proportions between the Marblehead fishermen and Mor- gan's Riflemen. The Yankees ridiculed the strange attire and bizarre appearance of the Virginians. Words were followed by blows, until an indescribable uproar, produced by a thousand combatants, greeted the appearance of the General. He had ordered his servant, Pompey, to dismount and let down the bars which closed the entrance to the camp ; this the negro was in the act of doing, when the General, spurring his horse, leaped over Pompey's head, cleared the bars, and dashed among the rioters. " The General threw the bridle of his horse into his servant's hands, and, rushing into the thickest of the fight, seized two tall, brawny riflemen by the throat, keeping them at arm's length, talking to and shaking them." His command- ing presence and gestures, together with the great physical strength he displayed, — for he held the men he had seized as incapable of resistance as babes, — caused the angry soldiers to fall back to the right and left. Calling the officers around him, with their aid the riot was quickly suppressed. The General, after giving orders appropriate to prevent the recurrence of such an affair, cantered away from the field, leaving officers and men alike astonished and charmed Avith what they had wit- nessed. "You have both a Howe and a Clinton in your army," said a British officer to a fair rebel. " Even so ; but you have no Washington in yours," was the reply. On the occasion when Colonel Patterson, Howe's adjutant- general, brought to Washington at New York the letter ad- dressed to " George Washington, Esq., &c., &c.," an officer who was present at the interview says his Excellency was very handsomely dressed and made a most elegant appearance. HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 303 Patterson appeared awe-struck, and every other word with him was " may it please your Excellency," or "if your Excellency please." After considerable talk on the subject of the letter, the Colonel asked, " Has your Excellency no particular com- mands with which you would please to honor me to Lord and General Howe 1 " " Nothing but my particidar compli- ments to both," replied the General, and the conference closed. Of his generals, Washington's relations with Knox were the most intimate and confidential. Lafayette fully shared in the feelings of love and veneration with which Knox regarded his hero. The appointment of Mad Anthony to command the army against the Northwestern Indians showed that the Presi- dent had great confidence in his courage and ability. Greene was thought to have possessed greater influence in the councils of the general-in-cliief than any other of his captains. None other of the superior officers appear to have stood on as familiar a footing as these. St. Clair was a Scotsman, Montgomery an Irishman, as was also General Conway, while Lee and Gates were Englishmen by birth. It is not a little surprising that in our rej^ublican army there should have been an officer born on our soil who not only claimed the title to an earldom, but also to be addressed as "My Lord" by his brother officers. He signed himself sim- ply " Stirling." A bon vivant, he was accused of liking the bottle fully as much as became a lord, and more than became a general. On convivial occasions he was fond of fighting his battles over. One of Stirling's daughters. Lady Kitty, made a private mar- riage -vvith Colonel William Duer, who acted so noble a part during the memorable cabal in Congress to elevate Gates to the chief command. Lady Kitty kept her secret so well that even her father's most intimate friends were not informed of it, and when Colonel Duer stated that he was married he was supposed to be jesting, until it was announced that the pair had passed the night together at the house of a friend. Lafayette always kept a huge bowl of grog on his table for all comers. Despite his deep red hair, he was one of the finest- 304 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. looking men in the army. His forehead was good, though re- ceding ; his eyes hazel ; his mouth and chin delicately formed, exhibiting beauty rather than strength. His carriage was noble, his manner frank and winning. He never wore powder, but in later years became quite bald and wore a wig. The Marchioness was not critically handsome, but had an agreeable face and figure, and was a most amiable woman. Mademoiselle and Master George were considered in their youth fine children, and the friends of the Marquis thought he made a great sacrifice of domestic happiness in espousing the cause of our country as warmly as he did. His son, George Wash- ington Lafayette, who was confided to a Bostonian's care dur- ing one of the stormy periods of his father's career after his return to France, accompanied the Marquis to America in 1824, and died at La Grange in 1849. Count Eochambeau could not speak a word of English, nor could the brothers. Baron and Viscount Yiomenil, the Mar- quis Laval, or Count Saint Maime. The two Counts Deux Fonts, on the other hand, spoke pretty well, while General Chastellux had fully mastered the language. During the stay of the French at Newport, an invitation to the petites soupers, of the latter officer was eagerly welcomed by intelligent Ameri- cans. It has been said there is not a proclamation of Napoleon to his soldiers in which glory is not mentioned and duty forgot- ten ; there is not an order of Wellington to his- troops in which duty is not inculcated, nor one in which glory is even alluded to. Washington's orders contain appeals to the patriotism, love of country, and nobler impulses of his soldiers. He re- buked profligacy, immorality, and kindred vices in scathing terms ; he seldom addressed his army that he did not confess his dependence on that Supreme guidance which the two pre- ceding illustrious examples ignored. In this study probably assembled the councils of war, at which we may imagine the General standing with his back to the cavernous fireplace, his brow thoughtful, his lips compressed beyond their wont, while the glowing embers paint fantastic HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 305 pictures on the wainscot, or cast weird shadows of the tall figure along the floor. Around the board are Ward, Lee, and Put- nam in the places of honor, with Thomas, Heath, Greene, Sul- livan, Spencer, and Knox in the order of rank. If the subject was momentous, or not finally disposed of to his satisfaction in the council, it was Washington's custom to require a written opinion from each of the generals. Opposite the study, on your left as you enter, is the recep- tion-room, in which Mrs. Washington, who arrived in Cam- bridge at about the same time as the news of the capture of Montreal, — twin events which gladdened the General's heart, — received her guests. These, we may assume, included all the families of distinction, either resident or who came to visit their relations in camp. On the day of the battle of Bunker Hill the untoward and afflicting scenes so affected one delicate, sen- sitive organization that the lady became deranged, and died in a few months. This was the wife of Colonel, afterwards Gen- eral, Huntington. But the gloomy aspect was not always uppermost, and gayety perhaps prevailed on one side of the hall, while matters of grave moment were being despatched on the other. It would not be too great a flight of fancy to imagine the lady of the household looking over the hst of her dinner invitations while her lord was signing the sentence of a court-martial or the order to open fire on the beleaguered town. Mrs. Washington entered this house on the 11th December, 1775, having for the companions of her journey from Virginia Mrs. Gates, John Custis and lady, and George Lewis. The General's wife had very fine dark hair. A portion of her wedding dress is higlily prized by a lady resident in Boston, while a shoe possessed by another gives assurance of a small, delicate foot. We pass into the dining-room, in which have assembled many of the most distinguished military, civil, and literary characters of our country. Washington's house steward was Ebenezer Aus- tin, who had been recommended to him by the Provincial Com- mittee. Mrs. Goodwin of Charlestown, the mother of Ozias Goodwin, a well-known merchant of Boston, was his house- T 306 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. keeper; she had been rendered homeless by the destruction of Charlestown. The General had a French cook and black servants, — then as common in Massachusetts as in the Old Dominion. • The General breakfasted at seven o'clock in the summer and at eight in the winter. He dined at two, and drank tea early in the evening ; supper he eschewed altogether. His breakfast was very frugal, and at this meal he drank tea, of which he was extremely fond. He dined well, but was not difficult to please in the choice of his viands. There were usually eight or ten large dishes of meat and pastry, with vegetables, followed by a second course of pastry. After the removal of the cloth the ladies retired, and the gentlemen, as was then the fashion, par- took of wine. Madeira, of which he drank a couple of glasses out of silver camp cups, was the General's favorite wine. Washington sat long at table. An officer who dined with him says the repast occupied two hours, during which the Gen- eral was toasting and conversing all the time. One of his aides was seated every day at the bottom of the table, near the Gen- eral, to serve the company and distribute the bottles. Wash- ington's mess-chest, camp equipage, and horse equipments were complete and elegant ; he broke all his own horses. Apropos of the General's stud, he had two favorite horses, — one a large, elegant chestnut, high-spirited and of gallant carriage, which had belonged to the British army ; the other a sorrel, and smaller. This was the horse he always rode in battle, so that whenever the General was seen to mount him the word ran through the ranks, " We have business on hand." Washington came to Cambridge in a light phaeton and pair, but in his frequent excursions and reconnoitring expeditions he preferred the saddle, for he was an admirable horseman. Billy, the General's black groom and favorite body-servant, has be- come an historical character. In order that nothing may be wanting to complete the in-door life in this old mansion in 1775 and 1776, we append a dinner invitation, such as was issued daily, merely cautioning the reader that it is not the production of the General, but of one of his familv : — HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 307 " The General & Mrs Washington present their compliments to Col? Knox & Lady, begs the favor of their company at dinner on Friday half after 2 o'clock " Thursday Evening Feby 1st." Among other notables Avho sat at the General's board in this room was Franklin, when he came to settle with his fellow- commissioners, Hon. Thomas Lynch of Carolina, and Benjamin Harrison of Virginia, the new establishment of the Continental army. General Greene, who was presented to the philosopher on the evening of his arrival, says : — " I had the honor to be introduced to that very great man. Doctor Franklin, whom I viewed with silent admiration during the whole evening. Attention watched his lips, and conviction closed his periods." We do not know whether grace was habitually said at the General's table or not, but the great printer would have will- ingly dispensed with it. It is related, as illustrative of the eminently practical turn of his mind, that he one day aston- ished that devout old gentleman, his father, by asking, "Father, why don't you say grace at once over the whole barrel of flour or pork, instead of doing so three times a day 1 " Neither his- tory nor tradition has preserved the respectable tallow-chan- dler's reply. The first steps taken by Washington to form a body-guard were in orders of the 11th of March, 1776, by which the com- manding officers of the regiments of the established army were directed to furnish four men each, selected for their honesty, sobriety, and good behavior. The men were to be from five feet eight to five feet ten inches in height, hand- somely and well made, and, as the General laid great stress upon cleanliness in the soldier, he requested that partic- ular attention might be paid to the choice of such as were "neat and spruce." The General stipulated that the can- didates for his guard should be drilled men, and perfectly willing to enter upon this new duty. They were not re- quired to bring either arms or uniform, which indicates the 108 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. General's intention to newly arm and clothe his guard, was the origin of the celebrated corps cT elite. Caleb Gibbs FLAG OF THE BODY-GUARD. This of Ehode Island was the first commander of the Life Guard. He had been adjutant of Glover's regiment, and must have rec- ommended himself to the commander-in- chief. After the war he resided in Boston, and was made naval store-keeper, with an office in Battery- march Street, the Yassall house be- for Xew York. On Washington took his departure from tween the 4th and 10th of April, 1776, the 4th he wrote from Cambridge to the president of Congress, and on the 11th he was at I^ew Haven en route to New York. On the occasion of his third visit to Boston, in 1789, he again passed through Cambridge and stopped about an hour at his old headquarters. He then received a military salute from the Middlesex militia, who were drawn up on Cambridge Common with General Brooks at their head. The next person to claim our attention is Nathaniel Tracy, who became the proprietor after the war. He kept up the tra- ditions of the mansion for hospitality, though we doubt whether his servants ever drank choice wines from pitchers, as has been stated. Tracy was from Newburyport, where, with his brother, he had carried on, under the firm name of Tracy, Jackson, and Tracy, an immense business in privateering. Martin Brimmer was their agent in Boston. He fitted out the first private armed vessel that sailed from an American port, and during the war was the principal owner of more than a score of cruisers, which inflicted great loss upon the enemy's marine. The follow- HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 309 ing extract will enable the reader to form a correct estimate of the hazard with which this business was conducted : — " At the end of 1777 his brother and he had lost one and forty ships, and with regard to himself he had not a ray of hope but in a single letter of marque of eight guns, of which he had received no news. As he was walking one day with his brother, discussing with him how they should procure the means of subsistence for their families, they perceived a sail making for the harbor, which fortu- nately proved a prize worth £ 20,000 sterhng. " In 1781 he lent the State of Massachusetts five thousand pounds to clothe theh troops, with no other security than the receipt of the State Treasurer." Mr. Tracy was generous and patriotic. Benedict Arnold was his guest while preparing to embark his troops for the Kenne- bec in 1775. He had entertained in 1782, at his mansion at ]^ewburyport, M. de Chastellux and his aides, Isidore Lynch, De Montesquieu, and TaUeyrand the younger. The Frenchmen could manage his good old Madeira and Xeres, but the home- brewed punch, which was always at hand in a huge punch- bowl, proved too much for De Montesquieu and Talleyrand, who succumbed and were carried drunk to bed. Tracy went to France in 1784, where he met with due re- turn for his former civilities from Viscount K'oailles and some of his old guests. In 1789, when again a resident of Newbury- port, he received Washington, then on his triumphal tour ; and in 1824 Lafayette, following in the footsteps of his illustrious commander, slept in the same apartment he had occupied. Xext comes Thomas Eussell, a Boston merchant-prince, ac- credited by the vulgar with having once eaten for his breakfast a sandAvich made of a hundred-dollar note and two slices of bread. Following Thomas RusseU came, in March, 1791, Dr. An- drew Craigie, late apothecary-general to the Continental army, in which service it is reported he amassed a very large fortune. For the estate, then estimated to contain one hundred and fifty acres, and including the house of Harry Vassall, — designated as that of Mr. Batchelder, but then occupied by Frederick Geyer, 310 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. — Mr. Craigie gave .£3,750 lawful money, — a sum so smaD in comparison with its value that our reader will pardon us for mentioning it. Craigie was at Bunker Hill, and assisted in the care of the wounded there. He was at Cambridge during the siege of Boston, and doubtless dispensed his nostrums liberally, for physic was the only thing of which the army had enough, if we may credit concurrent testimony. He was with the North- ern army, under General Gates, in 1777 and 1778, and was the confidant of Wilkinson, Gates's adjutant-general, in his corre- spondence with Lord Stirling, growing out of the Conway im- broglio. Craigie w^as a director and large proprietor in the company which built the bridge connecting East Cambridge with Boston, to which his name was given. After his decease his widow continued to reside here. Craigie entertained two very notable guests in this house. One of them was Talleyrand, the evil genius of Napoleon, who said of him that he always treated his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were one day to become his enemies. " A man of talent, but venal in everji^hing." The world has long expected the private me- moirs of this remarkable personage, but the thirty years which the prince stipulated in his will should first elapse have passed without their appearance. Without doubt, the private corre- spondence of Talleyrand would make a record of the most startling character, and give an insight into the lives of his con- temporaries that might reverse the views of the world in gen- eral in regard to some of them. Few dared to fence with the caustic minister. " Have you read my book ? " said Madame de Stael to the prince, whom she had there made to play a part as well as herself. " No," replied Talleyrand ; " but I understand we both figure in it as women." In December, 1794, the Duke of Kent, or Prince Edward as he was styled, was in Boston, and was received during his sojourn with marked attention. He was then in command of the forces in Canada, but afterwards joined the expedition, under Sir Charles Grey, to the French West Indies, where he HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY. 311 SO greatly distingiiislied himself by his reckless bravery at the storming of Martinique and Guadaloupe that the flank division which he commanded became the standing toast at the admiral's and commander-in-chiefs table. The Duke was a perfect mar- tinet, and was so unpopular with the regiment he commanded under O'Hara, at Gibraltar, that it repeatedly mutinied. He was the father of Queen Victoria. The prince was accompanied to Boston by his suite. He was very devoted to the ladies, especially so to Mrs. Thomas Eus- sell, whom he attended to the Assembly at Concert Hall. He danced four country-dances with liis fair companion, but she fainted before finishing the last, and he danced with no one else, at which every one of the other eighty ladies present was much enraged. At the British Consul's, where the prince held a levee, he was introduced to the widow of a British officer. Her he saluted, while he only bowed to the other ladies pres- ent, which gave rise to feelings of no pleasant nature in gentle breasts. It was well said by one who knew the circumstance, that had his Highness settled a pension on the young widow and her children it would indeed have been a princely salute. The prince visited Andrew Craigie. He drove a handsome pair of bays with clipped ears, then an unusual sight m the vicinity of Old Boston. In October, 1832, Mr. Sparks married Miss Frances Anne Allen, of ISTew York, and in April, 1833, he began house- keeping in the Craigie house. He was at this time engaged on his ** Writings of George Washington," and notes in his journal under the date of April 2 : — " This day, began to occupy Mrs. Craigie's house in Cambridge. It is a singular circumstance that, while I am engaged in preparing for the press the letters of General Washington which he wrote at Cambridge after taking command of the American army, I should occupy the same rooms that he did at that time." * Edward Everett, whose efforts in behalf of the Mount Vernon fond associate his name with our memorials of Washington, * Rev. Dr. Ellis's Memoir. 312 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. resided here just after his marriage, and while still a professor in the University of which he became president. Willard, Phillips, and Joseph Emerson Worcester, the lexicographer, also lived in the house we are describing. We now return to Mr. Longfellow, who became an inmate of the house in 1837, with Mrs. Craigie for his landlady. The Harvard professor, as he then was, took possession of the south- east chamber, which has been mentioned as Washington's. In this room were written " Hyperion " and " Voices of the Night," and to its inspiration perhaps we owe the lines, — " Lives of gi'eat men all remind us We may make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time." Nearly all of Longfellow's productions, except " Coplas de Manrique " and " Outre Mer," which were written at Bruns- wick, have been penned in the old Yassall homestead. It is related that one day, after patiently exhibiting his gi'and old mansion to a knot of visitors, to whose many questions he replied with perfect good-humor, the poet was about to close the door on the party, when the leader and spokesman accosted him with the startling question, — " Can you tell me who lives in this house now ? " " Yes, sir, certainly. I live here." "What name?" "Longfellow." " Any relation to the Wiscasset Longfellers ? " This house will ever be chiefly renowned for its associations with the Father of his Country, and when it is gone the spot will still be cherished in loving remembrance. Yet some pil- grims there will be who will come to pay tribute to the literary memories that cluster around it ; soldiers who conquer with the pen's point, and on whose banners are inscribed the watchword, " Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." OLD TOKY ROW AND BEYOND. 313 CHAPTEE XIV. OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. *' Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring." Dryden. THE house standing at the corner of Brattle and Sparks Streets, almost concealed from view by a group of giant, sweet-scented Lindens, has undergone such material change as not to be easily recognized for a relic of Colonial times. The old, two-storied house, seen in our view, has been bodily raised from its foundations, on the shoulders of a more youthful progeny, as if it were anxious to keep pace with the growth of the trees in its front, and still overlook its old landscape. Of about the same length of years as its neighbor which we have but now left, this house was in ante-Revolutionary times first the abode of Eichard Lechmere, and later of Jonathan Sewall, — royahsts both. To the former, a Boston distiller, we have already alluded ; but the latter may well claim a passing notice. He belonged to one of the old distinguished femilies of Massachusetts, and was himself a man of very 14 314 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. superior abilities. He was the intimate friend and associate of John Adams, and endeavored to dissuade him from embarking in the cause of his country. To Sewall, Adams addressed the memorable words, as they walked on the Great Hill at Port- land, " The die is now cast ; I have now passed the Rubicon : swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish, with my country is my unalterable determination." " Jonathan and John " again met in London, — the former a broken-down, disappointed man ; the latter ambassador of his country at the very court upon whose niggardly bounty the loyalist had depended. Sewall came to Nova Scotia, where he had been appointed Judge of Admiralty. He married Esther, the sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of Governor Hancock. Sewall's house was mobbed in September, 1774, and he was forced to flee into Boston. Old MacFingal asks, — " Wlio made that wit of water gruel A judge of Admiralty, Sewall ? " Sewall's house was at length assigned to General Riedesel as his quarters. His accomplished lady has left a souvenir of her sojourn, in her autograph, cut with a diamond on the pane of a west window, though we ought, perhaps, to say that the sig- nature is considered as the General's by his biographer. Un- fortunately, in removing the glass from the sash the pane was broken, an accident much regretted by Mr. Brewster, the present owner of the premises. Here the Germans enjoyed a repose after the vicissitudes they had undergone, and in which we hardly know how suffi- ciently to admire the fortitude and devotion of the Baroness. The beautiful lindens were a souvenir of the dear Rhineland, — not unworthy, indeed, to adorn even the celebrated prome- nade of Berlin. The Baroness frankly admits that she never was in so delightful a place, but the feeling that they were prisoners made her agreeable surroundings still echo the words of old Richard Lovelace : — - " Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor iron bars a cage." OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. 315 They had balls and parties, and duly celebrated the king's birthday. All the generals and officers, British and German, caqie here often, except Burgoyne, between whom and Riedesel a coolness existed. When Pliillips was put under arrest Gen- eral Heath recognized Riedesel as chief in command. Madame Riedesel had here an opportunity of returning the civilities of General Schuyler in a measure, by attentions to his daughter, who had married a gentleman named Church, and who, for reasons of his own, lived in Boston under the assumed name of Carter. Church was an Englishman, of good family, who had been unfortunate in business in London. He came to America, became a good whig, and, in connection mth Colonel Wads- worth of Connecticut, secured a principal share of the contract for supplying the French troojDs in our service. After the peace he returned to England. The uniform of the Germans was blue, faced with yellow, which came near causing some awkward mistakes where they were engaged. The poet describes the enemy's battle-array at Monmouth in this wise : — " Britons with Germans formed apart for fight, The left Aving rob'd in blue, in red the right." The Baroness relates that she found Boston pretty, but in- habited by violent, wicked people. The women, she says, regarded her with repugnance, and were even so shameless as to spit at her when she passed by them. She also accuses " that miserable Carter " of having proposed to the Americans to chop off the heads of the generals, British and German, salt them down in barrels, and send one over to the Ministry for every hamlet or town burned by the king's forces. Madam the baroness, it appears, was not less credulous than some foreign writers that have appeared since her day. The way in which the German contingent saved their colors after the surrender of Saratoga is Avorthy of mention. The flags were not given up on the day when the troops piled their arms, as the treaty required, but were reported to have been burnt. This was considered, and in fact ^vas, a breach of military faith. 316 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. * but, being supposed to have occurred through the pardonable chagrin of veterans who clung to the honor of their corps, was overlooked. Only the staves, however, were burned, the flags being concealed with such care by General Riedesel that even his wife did not know of it until the Convention troops were ordered to Virginia, when the Baroness sewed the flags in a mattress, which was passed into the enemy's hues at New York among the effects of an officer. The next of the seven families which Madame Riedesel men- tions as forming the exclusive royalist coterie of Old Cambridge was that of Judge Joseph Lee, whose house is still standing, not far from that of Mr. Brewster's, in our progress towards the setting sun. This house has the reputation of being the oldest in Cam- bridge, although another situated on Linnaean Street may, we think, dispute the palm with it. Evidently the building now appears much changed from its primitive aspect, both in re- spect to size and distinctive character. Externally there is nothing of the Puritan type of architecture, except the huge central chimney-stack, looking as if the very earth had borne it up with difficulty, for its outline appears curved where its bulk has settled unequally. The west end is of rough-cast, and the whole outward structure as unoesthetic and austere as possible. Judge Lee was a loyalist of a moderate stamp, who remained in Boston during the siege. He was permitted to return to Cambridge, and ended his days in his antique old mansion in 1802. The large square house at the corner of Fayerweather Street is comparatively modern, belonging to the period of about 1740- 50, when we find a large proportion of the mansions of the Colo- nial gentry sprang up, under the influence of rich harvests from the French War, which gave our merchant princes an opportu- nity of thrusting their hands pretty deeply into the exchequer of Old England. Captain George Ruggles owned the estate in Shirley's time, but before the Revolution it became the resi- dence of Thomas Fayerweather, for whom the street is named. OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. 317 The house passed into the possession of William Wells, in whose family it still remains. Having brought the reader a considerable distance from our point of departure, we at length come to a halt and consult our guide-book of only fifty odd years ago. It tells us we have arrived at " the cross road south of the late Governor Gerry's, now Eev. Charles Lowell's, seat." Tliis is Elmwood, the resi- dence of James Eussell Lowell. It is a pleasure to happen upon an old Colonial estate retain- inf so much of its former condition as this. It embodies more o of the idea of the country-house of a provincial magnate than is easily supplied to the limited horizons and scanty areas of some of our old acquaintances. The splendid grove of pines is a reminiscence of the primitive forest ; the noble elms have given a name to the compact old mansion-house and its remainmg acres ; and there are still the old barn and outbuildings, with the remnant of the ancient orchard. It is easy to see that the poet's pride is in his trees, and one lordly elm, seen from his library window, is worthy to be remembered with Milton's Mulberry or Luther's Linden. The grounds in front of the house are laid out in accordance with modern taste, but at the back the owner may ramble at will in paths all guiltless of the gardener's art, and imagine himself threading the solitudes of some rural glade remote from the sights and sounds of the town. Of old the road, like a huge serpent, enveloped the estate in its folds as it passed by the front of the house, and again stretched along the ancient settlement of Watertown where were its first humble cottages, its primitive church, and its burial-place. It is almost in sight of the spot, now the vicinity of the Arsenal, where the Enghsh landed by Captain Squeb at Xantasket, in May, 1630, made their way up Charles Eiver, and bivouacked in the midst of savages. Sir Richard Salton- stall's supposed demesne is still pointed out in the neighbor- hood, and at every step you meet with some memorial of the founders. According to old town boundaries, the estate of which we are writing was wholly in Watertown, and extended its 318 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. tifteen acres quite to Fresh Pond, on the north ; it is now within the limits of Cambridge. It has often been stated that this house was built by Colov nel Thomas Oliver (of whom anon) about 1760 ; but as the estate was only leased by him until the year 1770, when he acquired the title by purchase of the heirs of John Stratton, of Watertown, we do not give full credence to the assertion. The house is older in appearance, both without and within, than its usually assumed date of construction would warrant. More- over, in the conveyance to Oliver the messuage itself is named. The house is of wood, of three stories, and is, in itself, without any distinctive marks except as a type of a now obso- lete style of arcliitecture. A suit of yellow and white paint has freshened the exterior, as the powder of the colonial pro- prietor might have once rejuvenated his wrinkled countenance. The tall trees bend their heads in continual obeisance to the mansion, like so many aged servitors ranged around their mas- ter. Inwardly the woodwork is plain, and destitute of the elaborate enrichment seen in Mr. Longfellow's. As you enter the haU, which goes straight through the house, you see the walls are covered with ancestral portraits and with quaint old engravings, rare enough to have dated from the birthday of copperplate. An antique bust occupies a niche on the stair- case ; the old clock is there, and in every apartment are col- lected objects of art or specimens of ancient furniture, which seem always to have belonged to the house, so perfectly do they accord with wainscot, panel, and cornice. The reception-room is on the south side of the house, and behind it is the library. The poet's study, in which nearly all his poems have been written, is on the third floor. In the absence of the owner our visit was brief, nor do Ave feel at liberty longer to invade his domestic concerns, or revel amid his household gods. Not to fright away the muse from the old halls, another weU-known poet, T. B. Aldrich, takes his seat in the arm-chair and rests his feet on the fender. Taken altogether, Elmwood is an earthly paradise to which few would be unwilling to attain, and were we sure its atmosphere were OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. 319 contagious, we could haunt the spot, inhaling deep draughts in its cool and grassy retreats. Thomas Ohver, the last of the lieutenant-governors under the crown, dwelt here before the Eevolution. He belonged to the Dorchester family, and claimed no relationship with Andrew Oliver, the stamp-master and successor of Hutchinson as lieu- tenant-governor. The Olivers were of Huguenot descent, re- nowned in ancient French chivalry, where the family patro- nymic, now shortened by a letter, was deemed worthy to be coupled with that of a Eoland, a Eohan, or a Coligny. Thomas inherited a plentiful estate from his grandfather, James Brown, and his great-uncle, Robert Oliver, so that his father did not deem it necessary to provide further for him in his will than to bequeath some testimonials of affection. This dapper little man, as the crown-deputy was called, pleasant of speech and of courtly manners, was in no public office previous to his appointment under Hutchinson, — a choice so unexpected that it was currently believed that the name of Thomas had been inserted by accident in the commis- sion instead of that of Peter, the chief justice. But our Machia- velli, who had planned the affair, knew better. One fine afternoon in September, 1774, the men of Middle- sex appeared in the lieutenant-governor's grounds and wrung from him a resignation, after which he consulted his safety by a flight into Boston. How bitter to him was this enforced surrender of his office, may be gathered from the language in which it is couched : — " My house at Cambridge being surrounded by four thousand people, in compliance with their commands I sign my name, Thomas GHver." The house was utilized as a hospital after Bunker Hill, the opposite field being used as the burying-ground for such as died here. In opening new streets, some of the remains have been exhumed, — as many as eight or ten skeletons coming to light within a limited area. The royalist's habitation became the seat of his antipodes, — 320 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. a democratic governor, later vice-president, who resided here while holding these offices. Elbridge Gerry's signature is affixed to the Declaration of Independence, and he was one of the three commissioners sent by Mr. Adams to France in 1797. He was chosen by the Provincial Congress, of which he was a member, to attend the Gascon Lee, in his proposed interview with Burgoyne, who was to the full as bombastic, and who doubtless thought of his former companion in arms, " Nay an' thou 'It mouth, 1 '11 raut as well as thou." As one of the delegates to frame the Federal Constitution at Philadelphia, in 1787, ]Mr. Gerry refused to sign that instrument, and opposed its adoption by the Convention of Massachusetts. The result was for a time doubtful, but when the scale seemed to inchne in favor of the federalists, Gerry kept close at Cam- bridge, and his adherents made no motion for his recall. Han- cock, by the offer of a tempting prize, — supposed to be no less than the promise of the support of the Massachusetts leaders for the presidency in case Virginia failed to come in, — was in- duced to appear and commit himself in favor of ratification. Adams came over, and with the aid of Rufus King, Parsons, Otis, and the rest, the measure was carried. This scrap of secret history has but recently come to light. But Mr. Gerry will doubtless be recollected as well for the curious political manipulation of the map of Old Massachusetts, which gave a handle to his name by no means flattering to the sensibilities of its owner, and notoriety to one of the most effec- tive party caricatures of his time. Briefly, he was the means of introducing the word " Gerrymander " into our political vo- cabulary. The origin of the name and of the caricature have been subjects of quite recent discussion. The democratic or republican party having succeeded in re- electing Mr. Gerry in 1811, with both branches of the Legisla- ture in their hands, proceeded to divide the State into new Senatorial districts, so as to insure a democratic majority in the Senate. Hon. Samuel Dana, then President of the Senate, is OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. 321 considered the author of the scheme, which has also been at- tributed to Joseph Story, who was Speaker of the House until January 12, 1812, when he resigned. The bill passed both branches early in February, 1812, and received the approval of the governor. Under this new and then audacious arrange- ment, the counties of Essex and Worcester were carved up in such a manner as to disregard even the semblance of fairness. County lines were disregarded and pubHc convenience set at naught, in order to overcome the federal majorities in those counties. The singular appearance of the new Essex district, where a single tier of towns was taken from the outside of the county, and Chelsea, in Suffolk, attached, caused a general outcry from the federalists. The remainder of the county was completely enveloped by this political deformity, which, with its extremi- ties ill the sea at Salisbury, and Chelsea, walled out the remain- ing towns from the rest of the State. The map of Essex, which gave rise to the caricature, was drawn by Nathan Hale, who, with Henry Sedgwick, edited the " Boston Weekly Messenger," in which the geograpliic-political monstrosity first appeared, March 6, 1812. At a dinner-party at Colonel Israel Thorndike's house in Summer Street, Boston, — the site of which, previous to the great fire of 1872, was occupied by Gray's Block, — this map was exhibited and discussed, and its grotesque appearance gave rise to the suggestion that it only wanted wings to resemble some fabled monster of antiquity. Upon this Tisdale, the artist and miniature-painter, who was present, took his pencil and sketched the wings. The name of Salamander being pro- posed, Mr. Alsop, it is said, suggested that of Gerrymander, which at once won the approval of the company ; but it is not so clear who has the honor of inventing this name, — an honor claimed also for Ben Eussell and Mr. Ogilvie. With this designation the Gerrymander appeared in the " Boston Gazette" of March 26, 1812. The artist succeeded in forming a very tolerable caricature of Governor Gerry out of the towns of Andover, IVIiddleton, and Lynnfield. Salisbury formed the 14* ' u 322 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. head and beak of the griffin, Salem and Marblehead the claws. The design of this famous political caricature has been errone- ously attributed both to Stuart and to Edward Horsman. The word " Gerrymander," though fully incorporated into our language, has but lately found a place in the dictionaries. Upon the death of Mr. Gerry the property passed into the possession of Rev. Charles Lowell, father of the poet, by pur- chase from Mrs. Gerry. The new owner greatly improved and beautified the estate, the splendid elms giving it the name of Elmwood. Dr. Lowell is best remembered as the pastor of the S^ ^ ? West Church in Boston, where more l^'J^^^) ^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^ century's service has so /'^^ ^^ cilC\ frilly incorporated his name with that f({^l^I^^^^CZ^3%^ historic edifice that the church is better 4 known to-day as Lowell's than by its yv ancient designation. Dr. Lowell suc- ^ ceeded Rev. Simeon Howard, in whose I time the dismantled appearance of the ^-•^— ^""^ — West Church gave occasion to a scene not usually forming a part of the services. As a couple of Jack Tars were passing by the meeting-house on a Sunday, observing the remains of the steeple, which was cut down by the British troops in the year 1775, " Stop, Jack," says one of them, " d — n my eyes, but this ship is in distress ; she has struck her topmast. Let 's go on board and lend her a hand." Upon which they went in, but, finding no assistance was required of them, they sat down until service was ended. On their going out they were heard to say, " Faith, the ship which we thought was in distress has the ablest pilot on board that we 've seen for many a day." Elmwood comprises about thirteen acres, and is separated only by the road from Mount Auburn, wdiere the mould en- closes the remains of two of the poet's children. " I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn, Where a little headstone stood, How the flakes were folding it gently, As did rol)ins the babes in the wood." OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. 323 James liussell Lowell, after leaving college, became, in 1840, a member of the Suffolk bar, and opened an office in Boston. In this he was true to the traditions of his family. His grandsire filled the office of United States District Judge by the appointment of Washington ; his father studied law first and divinity afterwards; while his uncle, the "Boston Eebel" of 1812, was also bred to the bar. From another uncle, Francis Cabot, the city of Lowell takes its name ; and those delightful intellectual feasts, the Lowell lectures, arose from the bounty of another member of this family. Mr. Lowell soon relinquished the law, and his arguments are better known to the world through the medium of his essays and verse than by the law reports. In 1843 Lowell joined with Robert Carter in the publication of the " Pioneer," a magazine of brief existence. The broad humor and keen satire of the " Biglow Papers," which appeared during the Mexican War, are still relished by every class of readers, — the Yankee dialect, now so seldom heard in its native richness, giving a piquancy to the language and force to the poet's ideas. We have the assertion of a popular modern humorist * that his productions made no im- pression on the public until clothed in the Yankee vernacular, so much is the character associated with the idea of original mother-wit and shrewd common-sense. " Agin' the chimbly crooknecks hxuig, An' in amongst 'em rusted The old queen's arm thet gran'ther Young Fetched back from Concord busted. " The inquiry seems pertinent whether we are not on the eve of passing into a period of mediocrity in literature as well as of statesmanship. Prescott, Cooper, Irving, Everett, and Haw- thorne have gone before ; Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Bancroft, and Motley are descending into the vale of years, and the names of those who are to take their places are not yet written. The coming generation will perhaps look back upon ours as the Golden Age of American Letters, com- * Henry W. Shaw (Josh Billings). 324 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. parable only to the Golden Age of Statesmen in the day of Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and theu^ contemporary intellectual giants. As respects our catalogue of native authors, few, if any, have ever had their pens sharpened by necessity or dipped in the ink of privation. Most of them have been endowed with sufficient fortunes, gravitating naturally into literature, which they have enriched, to the great fame of American culture at home and abroad. Longfellow, it is said, is more read in England than any native poet, Tennyson not excepted; Lowell is also a favorite there ; and the works of Irving, Cooper, and Haw- thorne are to be found, in and out of the author's mother tongue, in the stalls of London, on the Paris quays, and in the shops of Leipsic and Berlin. Perhaps in the multitude of young authors now earning their daily bread in intellectual labor, some may yet rise on the crest of the wave worthy to receive the golden stylus from these honored hands, for in no one re- spect is the growth of our country more remarkable than in the enlarged and still increasing area of the literary field by the multiplication of vehicles of information. Nearly opposite the Lowell mansion once stood the white cottage of Sweet Auburn, some time tlie home of Caroline Howard, who became the wife of Eev. Samuel Gilman, of Charleston, in 1819, and is widely known as an authoress of repute. At the age of sixteen she commenced a literary career with her first composition in poetry, " Jepthah's Rash Vow," which was followed by other efforts in prose and verse. Per- haps her best-known work is the "Recollections of a Southern Matron." Miss Howard was the daughter of Samuel Howard, a ship- ^\Tight of N'orth Square, Boston. Her father dying in her in- fancy, Caroline came to live with her mother at Sweet Auburn, whose wild beauty impressed her young mind with whatever of poetic fire she may have possessed. Indeed, it is her own admission that her childhood days, passed in wandering amid the tangled groves, making rustic thrones and couches of moss, stamped her highly imaginative temperament with its subtle OLD TOEY KOW AND BEYOND. 325 influences. In girlhood she was foiiy-like ; her long oval face, from which the clustering curls were parted, having a deeply peacefully contemplative expression. She was a frequent vis- itor at Governor Gerry's, where she found books to feed, if not to satisfy, her cravings. Owing to changes of residence, her education was indifferent ; but her mind tended most naturally to the beautiful, music and drawing superseding the multipli- cation-table. When she was about fifteen she walked, every week, four miles to Boston, to take lessons in French. We close our chapter, a little out of the order of chronology, with a fragment of revolutionary history, which subtracts noth- ing from the interest of Elmwood. When, on the twenty- first of April, about noon, intelligence reached New Haven of the Battle of Lexington, the local militia company was immediately called out by its captain, Benedict Arnold, and forty of its members assented to his proposal to march at once to join the American army as volunteers. They left New Haven the next day. On the way they passed through Pom- fret, and were joined by General Israel Putnam. Arriving at Cambridge, they were quartered in the " splendid mansion of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver." This was the only company on the ground completely uniformed and equipped ; and, owing to its soldier-like appearance, it was selected to deliver the body of a British officer who had died of wounds received at Lexington. The company remained three weeks in Cambridge, when, with the exception of twelve of its number, who accom- panied Arnold on his adventurous expedition to Canada, it returned to New Haven. 326 HISTOIilC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. CHAPTEE XV. MOUNT AUBUKN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. " Crown me with flowers, intoxicate me with perfumes, let me die to the sounds of delicious music." — Dying loords of Mirabeau. IT would be curious to analyze the feelings with which a dozen different individuals approach a rural cemetery. Doubtless repulsion is uppermost in the minds of the greater number, for death and the grave are but sombre subjects at the best, and few are willingly brought in contact with the outward symbols of the King of Terrors. ENTRA^'CE TO MOUNT AUBURN. Much of the aversion to graveyards which is felt by our country people may be attributed to the hideous and fantastic emblems which are sculptured on our ancestors' headstones. MOUNT AUBURN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. 327 The death's-head, cross-bones, and hour-glass are but little em- ployed by modern art. We are making our cemeteries attrac- tive, and — shall we confess iti — that rivalry displayed along the splendid avenues of the Kving city finds expression in the habitations of the dead. The city of the dead has much in common with its bustling neighbor. It has its streets, lanes, and alleys, its aristocratic quarter, and its sequestered nooks where the lowher sleep as well as they that bear the burden of some splendid mausoleum. It has its ordinances, but they are for the living. Here we may end the comparison. Statesmen who in life were at enmity lie as quietly here as do those giants who are entombed in Westminster Abbey with only a slight wall of earth between. Pitt and Fox are separated by eighteen inches. " Biit where are they — the rivals ! a few feet Of sullen earth divide each winding-sheet." Authors, learned professors, men of science, ministers, soldiers, and magistrates people the silent streets. Every trade is repre- sented. The rich man, whose wealth has been the envy of thousands, takes up his residence here as naked as he came into the world. Sin and suffering are unknown. There is no money. Night and day are alike to the inhabitants. The dis- tant clock strikes the hour, unheeded. Time has ended and Eternity begun. Perhaps Franklin expressed the idea of death as beautifully as has been done by human lips, to Miss Hubbard on the death of his brother. He says : — " Our friend and we are in\ated abroad on a party of pleasure that is to last forever. His chair is first ready, and he is gone before us, — we could not all conveniently start together, and why should you and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow, and we know where to find him ? " Mount Auburn is a miniature Switzerland, though no loftier summits than the Milton Hills are visible from its greatest ele- vation. It has its ranges of rugged hills, its cool valleys, its lakes, and its natural terraces. The Charles might be the 328 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. Rhine, and Fresh Pond — could no fitter name be found for so lovely a sheet of water 1 — would serve our purpose for Lake Constance. A thick growth of superb forest-trees of singular variety covered its broken, romantic surface ; deep ravines, shady dells, and bold, rocky eminences were its natural attri- butes. You advance from surprise to surprise. Art has softened a little of the savage aspect without impair- ing its picturesqueness ; has hung a mantle of green tresses around the brow of some gray rock, or draped with willows and climbing vines each sylvan retreat. The green lawns are aglow with rich colors, — purple and crimson and gold set in emerald. Every clime has been challenged for its contribution, and the palm stands beside the pine. " How beautiful ! " is the thought which even the heavy-hearted must experience as they pass underneath the massive granite portal into this paradise. Nature here offers her consolation to the mourner, and man is, after all, only one of the wonderful forms sprung from her bosom. " Lay her i' the earth ; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring ! " As you thread the avenues, the place grows wonderfully u^^on you. The repugnance you may have felt on entering gives way to admiration, until it seems as if the troubles of this life were like to fall from you, with your grosser nature, leaving in tlieir stead nothing but peace and calm. Turn into this path which sometimes skirts the hillside, and then descends into a secluded glade environed with the houses of the dead. Here the work- men are enlarging the interior of a tomb, and the click of chisel and hammer vibrates Avith strange dissonance upon the stillness which otherwise enfolds the place. And one fellow, with no feeling of his office, is singing as he plies his task ! Who shall write the annals of this silent city 1 A sarcoph- agus on which is sculptured a plumed hat and sword ; a broken column or inverted torch ; a dove alighting on the apex of yonder tall shaft, or is it not just unfolding its white wings for flight ? the sacred volume, open and speaking ; a face trans- MOUNT AUBURN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. 329 ticrured, with holy angels flitting about in marble vesture. Here in a corner is one little grave, with the myrtle lovingly cluster- ino- above ; and here is no more room, for all the members ot the family are at home and sleeping. Each httle ridge has its story, but let no human ghoul disturb the slumberer's repose. Pass we on to the tower and up to the battlement. Our simUe holds good, for here in gray granite is a counterfeit of some old feudal castle by the Ehine. Here we stand, as it were in an amphitheatre, hedged in by waUs whose green slowly chan-es into blue ere they lose themselves where the ocean Hes glistening in the distance. The river, making its way through the hiUs, is at our feet. The rural towns which the city, like some huge serpent, ever uncoiling and extending its folds, is gradually enveloping and strangling, nestle among the hiUsides. Seaward, the smoke from scores of taU chimneys seams and disfigures the dehcate background of the sky, while they teU of life and activity within the vast workshop beneath. Let the great city expand as it will, here in its midst is a city of gi^aves, its circle ever extending. It needs no soothsayer to teU^'us which wiU yet enroll the greater number. A view of Mount Auburn by moonhght and from this tower we should not commend to the timid. The white monuments would seem so many apparitions risen from thek sepulchral habitations. The swaying and murmuring branches would send forth strange whisperings above, if they did not give illusive movement to the spectral forms beneath. But none keep vigil on the watch-tower, unless some spirit of the host below stands guard upon the narrow platform waiting the final trumpet soimd. Mount Auburn has always been compared with the great cemetery of Paris, originally called Mont Louis, but now every- where known by the name of old Fran9ois Delachaise, the con- fessor of Louis Quatorze, and of whom Madame de Maintenon said some spiteful things. The celebrated French cemetery was laid out on the grounds of the Jesuit establishment, and first used for sepulture in 1804, nearly thirty years previous to the occupation of Blount Auburn for a similar purpose. The area 330 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. of the American considerably exceeds that of the Parisian cem- etery, while its natural advantages are greatly superior. The two remaining survivors among the founders of Mount Auburn are Dr. Jacob Bigelow, its earliest friend, and Alexan- der Wadsworth, who made the first topographical survey. It should afford singular gratification to have lived to witness not only their creation serving as a model for every city and village in the land, but also to see that it has been the actual means of preserving the remains of those gathered within its compass from that miscalled spirit of progress which threatens the exist- ence of the most ancient of our city graveyards. It is as like as not that the remains of Isaac Johnson, the founder of Bos- ton, will be distui'bed erelong, and that the old enclosure which contains the ashes of John Hancock and of Samuel Adams will be crossed by an avenue. When this takes place we hope the relics of these patriots will be removed to some of the rural cemeteries, where their countrymen may rear that monument to their memory the lack of which savors much too strongly of the ingratitude of republics. But this experience in regard to cemeteries is not peculiar to American cities. The old burial-ground of Bunliill-Fields in London, called by Southey the " Campo Santo of the Dissent- ers," and where Bunyan, George Fox, Isaac Watts, and De Foe lie, was only preserved, in 18G7, after considerable agitation. The ancient custom of entombment under churches may also be considered nearly obsolete. The old English cathedrals are vast charnel-houses, in which interments are prohibited by act of Parliament, special authority being necessary for interment in Westminster Abbey. The mandates of health alone were long disregarded, but the absolute insecurity of this method of sepulture has been too recently demonstrated by the great fire in Boston to need other exami^les. ]^either are the rural cemeteries totally exempt from adverse contingencies. War is their great enemy, and as they are usually located upon ground the best adapted to the operations of a siege, they h^ive often become the theatre of sanguinary conflict. The shattered stones at Gettysburg, where the dead MOUNT AUBURN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. 331 once lay more thickly above ground than beneath, will long bear witness of the destructive power of shot and shell. Cave Hill, the beautiful buiial-place of Louisville, Ky., still bears the scars made by General Nelson's trenches. We do not now need to cite the customs of the ancients who often built their cemeteries without their walls, since the prac- tice of interment within the limits of our larger cities is now generally expressly forbidden. Our own ancestors chose the vicinity of their churches, as was the custom in Old England. Sometimes burials were made along the highways, and not un- frequently in the private grounds of the family of the deceased. This custom, which has prevailed to its greatest extent in the country, has, in many instances, been productive of consequen- ces revolting to the sensibilities. Often the fee of a family graveyard has passed to strangers. We have seen little clusters of gravestones standing uncared for in the midst of an open field ; we have known them to lie prostrate for years, and even to be removed where they obstructed the mowing. There was a curious resemblance between the manner of sepulture practised by the ancient Celts and Britons with that in vogue among the American aborigines. The former buried their dead in cists, barrows, cavities of the rocks, and beneath mounds. The deceased were often placed in a sitting posture, and their arms and trinkets deposited with them. The latter heaped up mounds, or carefully concealed their dead in caves. The implements of war or the chase, belonging to the warrior, were always laid by his side for his use in the happy hunting- grounds. Some analogy in religious belief would justly be inferred from this similarity of customs. The Indian remains are commonly found in a sitting posture also, except where cir- cumstances do not admit of inhumation, when they are fre- quently placed on scaftblds, in a reclining posture, in the branches of trees and out of the reach of wild animals. This disposition of the dead appears to be peculiar to the red-men of Xorth America. Our own sepulchral rites have altered but little in a century. Mankind yet craves "the bringing home of bell and burial." 332 HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. A hundred years ago, carriages being as yet confined to the few, the greater part of the mourners often walked to the grave. Decorum, indeed, exacted that the immediate relatives of a deceased person should walk in procession, no matter what the weather might be. These were followed by acquaintances, who paid with simulated sorrow the duties required of them by fashion. A train of empty carriages brought up the rear, while the bells were tolled to keep the devil at a respectful distance. The custom of the nearest friends following the body to the grave in their moments of greatest affliction originated, it is said, with us in ^ew England. It is worthy of being classed with that other agonizing horror which compelled the mourner to listen to the fall of the clods upon the coffin. Hired mourners have not yet made their appearance among us ; but if, while we stand here in Mount Auburn, we scan the faces of the occupants of yonder long train of vehicles, how many shall bear the impress of real grief ? '' Hot. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. "Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think it was to see my mother's wedding." The increasing cost of funerals is becoming a matter of seri- ous solicitude. The equality of the grave is by no means appli- cable to these displays. The rich, who can afford to be lavish, are copied by the poor, who cannot afford it. The trappings of the hearse, the number and elegance of the carriages, are noted for imitation. " Such a one made a poor funeral," or " There were but half a dozen carriages," followed by an expressive shrug, are not uncommon remarks, serving to fix the worldly condition of the deceased. Pomp at funerals is an inheritance which lapsed into the observance of a few simple forms vmder our Puritan ancestors. It grew under the province into such proportions as called for the intervention of positive law to prevent the poorer classes ruining themselves, for it was long the custom to present mourning scarfs, gloves, and gold rings to all the friends and relatives. MOUNT AUBURN TO NONANTUM BRIDGE. 33S In England Lord Chesterfield was among the first to dis- countenance ostentatious funerals. His will, marked by pecu- liarities, provides for his own last rites in these words : — " Satiated with the pompous follies of this life, of which I have had an uncommon share, I would have no posthumous ones dis- played at my funeral, and therefore desire to be biiried at the next burying-place to the place where I shall die, and limit the whole expense at my funeral to one hundred pounds." Not unfrequently, however, the ^vill of a deceased person is thwarted, as was the case with Governor Burnet, whose friends were determined that his exit should not be made without noise or ceremony, in accordance with his request. The Irish may claim pre-eminence for singularity in the funereal rite. With us the house of mourning is sacredly devoted to silence and sorrow. We step as lightly as if we feared the slumberer's awakening. The light burns dimly in the chamber of death, casting pale shadows on the recumbent, rigid figure, robed for eternity. Hushed and awe-stricken watchers flit noiselessly about. It is difiicult, therefore, to comprehend the orgies which usually attend on a " wake." All we know is, it is a custom, and as such is respected, though to our mind " more honored in the breach than the observance." Our veneration for the dead is not of that fine, subtle quality that guards the place of sepulture, even of the great, with jeal- ous care. The mother of Washington long slept in an unknown grave ; the place where the ashes of Monroe were deposited was wellnigh forgotten, while that of President Taylor is neglected. It is doubtful if there are fifty persons now living who know the last resting-place of Samuel Adams. Michel Ney has no monument in Pere la Chaise. What better illustration of the f ll^ ^^^^^ • 1 i*<3fc . ♦ o ■«*- '••• <«>" . ♦ 4^ ^ • .» y* <^. "♦•To '^O' \^ .^^ ^o. ^^rrr^' .-i«-' o. • ^'^:«»i:.%, • •« =.*' » %.** '• Co ^^ iP-A j^"^*>. ,^^«3c * «,. t* ' %/ - HECKMAN BINDERY INC. 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