[Boston] (561), on Massachusetts Bay, is the capital of Massachusetts and the chief city of New England, one of the best-built and best-appointed cities of the Union. With an excellent harbour and eight converging railways it is an emporium of trade, and very wealthy. Sugar, wool, hides, and chemicals are imported; farm produce, cattle, cotton, and tobacco exported; boot and shoe making is one of many varied industries. The many educational institutions and its interest in literature and art have won for it the title of American Athens. Among famous natives were Franklin, Poe, and Emerson; while most American men of letters have been associated with it. The Boston riots of 1770 and 1773 were the heralds of the revolution, and the first battle was fought at Bunker Hill, not far off, now included in it.
[Boston, Thomas], a Scottish divine, born at Duns, educated at Edinburgh, became minister of Ettrick; author of the "Fourfold State," a popular exposition of Calvinism, and "The Crook in the Lot," both at one time much read and studied by the pious Presbyterian burghers and peasantry of Scotland; the former an account of the state of man, first in innocence, second as fallen, third as redeemed, and fourth as in glory. He was a shrewd man and a quaint writer; exercised a great influence on the religious views of the most pious-minded of his countrymen (1676-1732).
[Boston Tea-party], the insurgent American colonists who, disguised as Indians, boarded, on Dec. 16, 1773, three English ships laden with tea, and hurled several hundred chests of it into Boston harbour, "making it black with unexpected tea."
[Boswell, James], the biographer of Johnson, born at Edinburgh, showed early a penchant for writing and an admiration for literary men; fell in with Johnson on a visit to London in 1763, and conceived for him the most devoted regard; made a tour with him to the Hebrides in 1773, the "Journal" of which he afterwards published; settled in London, and was called to the English bar; succeeded, in 1782, to his father's estate, Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, with an income of £1600 a year. Johnson dying in 1784, Boswell's "Life" of him appeared five years after, a work unique in biography, and such as no man could have written who was not a hero-worshipper to the backbone. He succumbed in the end to intemperate habits, aggravated by the death of his wife (1740-1795).
[Boswell, Sir Alexander], son and heir of the preceding, an antiquary; mortally wounded in a duel with James Stuart of Dunearn, who had impugned his character, for which the latter was tried, but acquitted (1775-1822).
[Bosworth], a town in Leicestershire, near which Richard III. lost both crown and life in 1485, an event which terminated the Wars of the Roses and led to the accession of the Tudor dynasty to the throne of England in the person of Henry VII.
[Bosworth, Joseph], an Anglo-Saxon scholar, born in Derbyshire; became professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford; was the author of an Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Dictionary (1789-1876).
[Botany Bay], an inlet in New South Wales, 5 m. S. of Sydney; discovered by Captain Cook in 1770; so called, by Sir Joseph Banks, from the variety and beauty of its flora; was once an English convict settlement.
[Both, John and Andrew], Flemish painters of the 17th century, the former a landscape and the latter a figure painter; worked frequently on the same canvas.
[Bothnia], a prov. of Sweden, divided into E. and W. by a gulf of the name.