BOSTON DEVELOPMENT.
When the great Boston fire had been quenched, and an estimate was being formed of the enormous losses, the significant statement was made that "the best treasure of Boston cannot be burnt up. Her grand capital of culture and character, of science and skill, humanity and religion, is beyond the reach of flame. Sweep away every store and house, every school and church, and let the people with their history and habits remain, and they still have one of the richest and strongest cities on earth." This is the prominent characteristic of Boston public spirit. The people take the greatest pride in their city, its high rank and achievements, and the wealthy and energetic townsfolk are always alert to extend them. There are more libraries, schools, colleges, art and scientific collections, museums, conservatories of music and educational foundations in and near Boston than in any other American city. Magnificent structures, the homes of art, science and education, are scattered with prodigality all about. Next to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library is the largest in America. Bostonians love the fine arts, and the many open spaces and public grounds are adorned with statues of eminent men and groups representing historical events. The people seem to be always studying and investigating, the women as well as the men pursuing the difficult paths of abstruse knowledge, so that armies of them, fully equipped, scatter over the country to impart the learning of the "Modern Athens" to less fortunate communities. There are many fine churches, especially in the newer parts of the West End, whither have removed into grand temples of modern artistic construction quite a number of the wealthy congregations of the older town. Boston is also full of clubs, in endless variety, formed for every conceivable purpose, and several of them very handsomely housed.
To get available room and facilitate business, the city has gathered the terminals of all the railways into two enormous stations on the northern and southern sides of the town, and for nearly a half century it has been filling-in the fens and lowlands to the westward, so that now this reclaimed West End is the fashionable section, containing the finest churches, hotels, and residences. Through this splendid district extends for over a mile the grand Commonwealth Avenue, two hundred and forty feet wide, its centre being a tree-embowered park adorned by statues of Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, William Lloyd Garrison, and Leif Ericson, and having on either side a magnificent boulevard. The bordering residences are fronted by delicious gardens, and at regular intervals fine streets cross at right angles, their names arranged alphabetically, in proceeding westward, with the well-known English titles, Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, etc. Parallel to the Avenue are also laid out Boylston, Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets through this favorite residential section. Proceeding out Boylston Street are passed the stately buildings of the Museum of Natural History, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with twelve hundred students, the leading institution of its kind in America. Beyond, at the intersection of Dartmouth Street, is Copley Square, displaying around it the finest architectural group in the city, five magnificent buildings, three of them churches. Trinity Episcopal Church, built on the northern side, in free Romanesque, is formed as a Latin cross, with a massive central tower, two hundred and ten feet high. It has elaborate interior decoration and fine windows. The Public Library, on the southern side, is in Roman Renaissance, two hundred and twenty-eight by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and sixty-eight feet high, erected at a cost of nearly $2,400,000. It contains eight hundred thousand volumes, and the interior is excellently adapted to its uses, being tastefully adorned. The Second Unitarian Church, on the northern side of the square, built in 1874, was the church of the three Mathers, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Museum of Fine Arts, on the eastern side of the square, is constructed of red brick and terra-cotta, and contains extensive collections. The fifth building fronting the square is the "New Old South Church," in Italian Gothic, with a tower rising two hundred and forty-eight feet.
Beyond this fashionable district, the "Back Bay Fens" have been skillfully laid out in a series of boulevards and parks, making a chain extending several miles south and southwest through the suburbs, Franklin Park, covering nearly a square mile, being the chief. Here, on grounds with great natural adornments, in Roxbury, Brookline, and Brighton, is a region of much beauty. The surface is undulating, finely wooded, dotted with lakes, and displaying many costly suburban houses, in full glory of garden and foliage. This pleasant region spreads to Chestnut Hill, where the city has its great water reservoir, holding eight hundred million gallons, the favorite drive from Boston being to and around this reservoir, the route giving splendid views from the hilltop. Jamaica Pond and Jamaica Plain are near by, two of Boston's attractive cemeteries being beyond the latter, Mount Hope and Forest Hills. Here is also the famous Arnold Arboretum, the greatest institution of its kind, now part of the park system, and having a grand outlook from its central hill. In West Roxbury is the Martin Luther Orphan Home, which now occupies the noted "Brook Farm," where a group of cultivated people, led by George Ripley, and including Hawthorne, Curtis, Dana, Channing, Thoreau, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, made their famous attempt to found a socialistic community in 1841, but found that it would not work. It was described as an experiment in "plain living and high thinking," the articles of association calling it the "Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education," for the establishment of an "agricultural, literary, and scientific school or college." Pupils were taken, and in its most successful period there were about one hundred and fifty persons in the community; "kitchen and table were in common; very little help was hired, but philosophers, clergymen and poets worked at the humblest tasks, milking cows, pitching manure, cleaning stables, etc., while cultivated women cooked, washed, ironed, and waited at table; all work, manual or intellectual, was credited to members at a uniform rate of ten cents an hour." Later, it became a Fourieristic "phalanstery," under the title of the "Brook Farm Phalanx;" then, in 1845, the chief building burnt down, and financial difficulties following, the experiment, which had excited world-wide comment, was abandoned in 1847.
NONATUM AND SUDBURY.
To the westward of Brighton is the extensive and wealthy suburban city of Newton, a favorite place of rural residence for Bostonians. Here rises, near Newton Corner, the ancient Nonatum Hill, where the Apostle Eliot first preached to the Indians, the name being now classically modernized into Mount Ida. Eliot converted these Indians, who became the Christian tribe of Nonatum and formed their system of government after the plan set forth in the Book of Exodus, with rulers of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. For them the Bible was translated into the Indian language by Eliot and printed at Cambridge in 1663. They removed nearer to Charles River, where there were better soils, at Natick, their village consisting of three streets lined with little huts and gardens, a large circular fort, and a building for a church and school, at the same time having a rude bridge constructed over the river. Natick is now a busy shoemaking town, with about ten thousand people, and in South Natick is the old Indian cemetery and Eliot's Oak. To the northward of Natick is Cochituate Lake, the chief source of Boston's water supply, over three miles long, and having with tributary ponds nearly a thousand acres area when full of water in the spring. To the eastward of Natick is Wellesley, where the famous Wellesley Female College, with seven hundred students, has its spacious buildings located in a beautiful park. To the northward is the valley of Sudbury River, into which Lake Cochituate discharges, and here at Sudbury was the old colonial tavern which Longfellow has given renown in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":
"One autumn night in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with firelight through the leaves