Like many other persons of that period, Mr. Butler did not appreciate the fact that the best way to prevent evasions of the law is to reduce the rates of postage so low that it will not pay to run the risk of fraud.

Captain Welcome Lothrop succeeded Mr. Butler as postmaster, and during his administration the office was kept in Liberty Hall. Captain Lothrop was a native of Easton, Massachusetts, and a land-surveyor of some repute in this neighborhood. Artemas Wood followed him by appointment on February 22, 1849; but he never entered upon the duties of his office. He was succeeded by George H. Brown, who had published The Spirit of the Times-a political newspaper - during the presidential canvass of 1848, and in this way had become somewhat prominent as a local politician. Mr. Brown was appointed on May 4, 1849; and during his term the office was kept in an ell of his dwelling-house, which was situated nearly opposite to the Orthodox meeting-house. He was afterward the postmaster of Ayer. Mr. Brown was followed by Theodore Andruss, a native of Orford, New Hampshire, who was commissioned on April 11, 1853. Mr. Andruss brought the office back to Liberty Hall, and continued to be the incumbent until April 22, 1861, when he was succeeded by George W. Fiske. On February 13, 1867, Henry Woodcock was appointed to the position, and the office was then removed to the Town Hall, where most excellent accommodations were given to the public.

He was followed on June 11, 1869, by Miss Harriet E. Farnsworth, now Mrs. Marion Putnam; and she in turn was succeeded on July 2, 1880, by Mrs.

Christina D. (Caryl) Fosdick, the widow

of Samuel Woodbury Fosdick, and the present incumbent.

The office is still kept in the Town Hall, and there is no reason to think that it will be removed from the spacious and commodious quarters it now occupies, for a long time to come. Few towns in the Commonwealth can present such an array of distinguished men among their postmasters as those of Groton, including, as it does, the names of Judge Dana, Judge Richardson, Mr. Butler, and Governor Boutwell.

By the new postal law which went into operation on the first of last October, the postage is now two cents to any part of the United States, on all letters not exceeding half an ounce in weight. This rate certainly seems cheap enough, but in time the public will demand the same service for a cent. Less than forty years ago the charge was five cents for any distance not exceeding three hundred miles, and ten cents for any greater distance. This was the rate established by the law which took effect on July 1, 1845; and it was not changed until July, 1851, when it was reduced to three cents on single letters, prepaid, or five cents, if not prepaid, for all distances under three thousand miles. By the law which went into operation on June 30, 1863, prepayment by stamps was made compulsory, the rate remaining at three cents; though a special clause was inserted, by which the letters of soldiers or sailors, then fighting for the Union in the army or navy, might go without prepayment.

BEACON HILL BEFORE THE HOUSES.
BY DAVID M. BALFOUR.

THE visitor to the dome of the Capitol of the State, as he looks out from its lantern and beholds spread immediately beneath his feet a semi-circular space, whose radius does not exceed a quarter of a mile, covered with upward of two thousand dwelling-houses, churches, hotels, and other public edifices, does not in all probability ask himself the question: "What did this place look like before there was any house here?" When LieutenantColonel George Washington visited Boston in 1756, on business connected with the French war, and lodged at the Cromwell's Head Tavern, a building which is still standing on the north side of School Street, upon the site of No. 13, where Mrs. Harrington now deals out coffee and "mince "-pie to her customers, Beacon Hill was a collection of pastures, owned by thirteen proprietors, in lots containing from a half to twenty acres each. The southwesterly slope of the prominence is designated upon the old maps as "Copley Hill." We will now endeavor to describe the appearance of the hill, at the commencement of the American Revolution, with the beacon on its top, from which it took its name, consisting of a tall mast sixty feet in height, erected in 1635, with an iron crane projecting

from its side, supporting an iron pot. The mast was placed on cross-timbers, with a stone foundation, supported by braces, and provided with cross-sticks serving as a ladder for ascending to the crane. It remained until 1776, when it was destroyed by the British; but was replaced in 1790 by a monument, inclosed in a space six rods square, where it remained until 1811. It was surmounted by an eagle, which now surmounts the speaker's desk in the hall of the House of Representatives, and had tablets upon its four sides with inscriptions commemorative of Revolutionary events. It stood nearly opposite the southeast corner of the reservoir lot, upon the site of No. 82 Temple Street, and its foundation was sixty feet higher up in the air than the present level of that street. The lot was sold, in 1811, for the miserable pittance of eighty cents per square foot!

Starting upon our pedestrian tour from the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, where now stands the Albion, was an acre lot owned by the heirs of James Penn, a selectman of the town, and a ruling elder in the First Church, which stood in State Street upon the site of Brazer's Building. The parsonage stood opposite,

upon the site of the Merchants Bank stands upon it. Having reached the Building, and extended with its garden summit of the hill, we come abreast of to Dock Square, the water flowing up the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Govnearly to the base of the Samuel Adams ernor John Hancock, the first signer statue. Next comes a half-acre lot of the immortal Declaration of Ameriowned by Samuel Eliot, grandfather can Independence, extending from of President Eliot of Harvard Univer- Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and sity. Then follows a second half-acre northerly to Derne Street, embracing lot owned by the heirs of the Reverend the Capitol lot, and also the reserJames Allen, fifth minister of the First voir lot, for which last two he paid, in Church, who, in his day, as will be 1752, the modest sum of eleven hunshown in the sequel, owned a larger dred dollars! It is now worth a thouportion of the surface of Boston than sand times as much. For the remainder any other man, being owner of thirty- of his possessions in that vicinity he seven of the seven hundred acres which paid nine hundred dollars more. The inclosed the territory of the town. upper part of Mount Vernon Street, the His name is perpetuated in the street upper part of Hancock Street, and of that name bounding the Massachu- Derne Street, were laid out through it. setts General Hospital grounds. Som- Then, descending the hill, comes Benerset Street was laid out through it. jamin Joy's two-acre pasture, extending The Congregational House, Jacob from Joy Street to Walnut Street, and Sleeper Hall, and Boston University extending northerly to Pinckney Street; Building, which occupies the former forty-seven dwelling-houses now standsite of the First Baptist Church, under ing upon it. Mr. Joy paid two thouthe pastorship of the Reverend Rollin sand dollars for it. At the time of its H. Neale, stand upon it. Next comes purchase he was desirous of getting a Governor James Bowdoin's two-acre house in the country, as being more pasture, extending from the last-named healthy than a town-residence, and he street to Mount Vernon Street, and selected this localty as "being country northerly to Allston Street; the upper enough for him." The upper part of part of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Joy Street was laid out through it. Place were laid out through it; the Now follows the valuable twenty-acre Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, pasture of John Singleton Copley, the formerly Freeman-place Chapel, built eminent historical painter, one of whose by the Second Church, under the pas- productions (Charles the First demandtoral care of the Reverend Chandler ing in the House of Commons the Robbins, and afterwards occupied by arrest of the five impeached members) the First Presbyterian Church, the is now in the art-room of the Public Church of the Disciples, the Brattle- Library. It extended for a third of a square Church, the Old South Church, mile on Beacon Street, from Walnut and the First Reformed Episcopal Street to Beaver Street, and northerly Church; so that the entire theological to Pinckney Street, which he purchased gamut has resounded from its walls; the Swedenborgian Church, over which the Reverend Thomas Worcester presided for a long series of years, also

in lots at prices ranging from fifty to seventy dollars per acre. Walnut, Spruce, a part of Charles, River, Brimmer, Branch Avenue, Byron Avenue,

Lime, and Chestnut Streets, Louisburg ervoir lot about twenty feet, and Louisburg Square about fifteen feet. The contents of the excavations were used to fill up Charles Street as far north as Cambridge Street, the parade-ground on the Common, and the Leverettstreet jail lands. The territory thus conveyed now embraces some of the finest residences in the city. The Somerset Club-house, the Church of the Advent, and the First African Church, built in 1807 by the congregation worshiping with the Reverend Daniel Sharp, stand upon it.