himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of the people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which is perhaps as showy as that of the most considerable tradesman in London." Women certainly had a part in all this, while they often turned up in notable funeral sermons. During the Revolution, however, the women of Boston were prominent, and as time went on they became extravagant, being addicted to finery more than to culture; and the caustic John Quincy Adams says, "Oh that our young ladies were as distinguished for the beauties of their minds as they now are for the charms of their persons! But, alas! too many of them are like a beautiful apple that is insipid to the taste." Young ladies and politicians, however, were pretty much alike when pictured by his sharp-nibbed pen. Yet Mrs. Cheney writes: "It is impossible to give any idea of the charms of Boston women in society. Many a foreign traveller has borne witness to it, and many old residents now love to recall the memory of those who made the world the feast it was' in their youth. But Boston women were then eminently delicate and reserved, and little public record remains of their lives. Eliot, Lyman, Quincy, Sullivan, Amory, are names which at once call up visions of dignified womanly culture and poetic beauty. Miss Emily Marshall became more widely known than any other lady, simply for her social attractions," which is evident from the fact that "the hackmen"-for she does not appear to have kept a carriage-" were so spell-bound with admiration. that they forgot to open the door." Of the late Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis it is said that she was "less truly Bostonian in her manners. She had lived much abroad and learned the art of entertaining guests simply and agreeably." However exact the latter clause may be, she was a most charming and noteworthy woman, and exhibited the movement of Boston society as it drifted away from the old-time stiffness and reserve.

The discussion of "The Drama in Boston" shows a sad return to the flesh-pots of Egypt, or at least of Europe, as the founders of Boston, like American Colonists in general, were not partial to the Player, who vilified colonial enterprise upon the London stage and performed the part of Sanballat. Yet their descendants have found the Drama toothsome, and incline to the opinion that "the play's the thing." In discussing Fine Art, the writer says that "A Puritan society was not favorable to art," and the whole chapter shows how, by degrees, the "Puritan "-or, however, as should have been said, the Non-conformist-idea gradually faded out of the public mind, the people naturally returning to the normal love of picture, symbol, and color. Early Boston was scarcely more favorable to music. Referring to the progress made, the writer says: "The whole movement, so

to speak, is really included in the present century. Before the year 1800, all that bore the name of music in New England may be summed up in the various modifications of the one monotonous and barren type-the Puritan Psalmody. Its history, quaint as it may be, is more interesting as one phase of the old Puritan life and manners, than as having any significant relation to the growth of music or of musical taste or knowledge here as such. Music for us had to be imported from an older and richer soil." One nevertheless recognizes more clearly the growth of reconciliation with a forsworn world beyond sea in the chapter on Architecture, and especially in connection with ecclesiastical architecture. Though affiliating originally with the men who destroyed the abbeys and knocked down the carved work of the churches and cathedrals with axes and hammers, Boston has come to be one of the most pronounced fine-art loving cities. in the world. In ecclesiastical architecture the advance has been made from the barn to the cathedral. Nothing is too ecclesiastical or too grand, and we may also say, too sensuous, for Boston now; and the founders would here find a rehabilitation of the old "idolatries," and see the abomination. of desolation standing where it ought not to stand. The elaborate splendor of the New Trinity, superior to anything of the kind to be found on this continent, is not perhaps to be wondered at; but with the “First Church," "Brattle Square," and the "New Old South," so delicately engraved on the pages of the volume before us, it is quite another thing, representing as they do the exquisite Gothic of England and the almost equally pleasing style of the Lombards. But Italy and the North, even, do not satisfy Boston to-day, and all countries are searched in the quest for fine examples, by men who have descended in the direct line from the most famous and influential of the early non-conforming families. This shows a growth of religious opinion equally with æsthetic culture. Yet the writer on architecture, the progress of which in Boston has proved so triumphant, does not appear to realize very fully the significance of what is being wrought out in marble and brown stone. Indeed, the same remark appears applicable to many of the writers, who, while recording the changes, do not seem to feel that Boston has changed. Nevertheless the Memorial History is one continued confession of the mistakes of the fathers, whose children are laboring to undo these mistakes and put Boston in her true connection with the thought of the world.

The chapter on Science shows the same desire for a new departure which was shown by the printer of a somewhat modern edition of Mather's "Christian Philosopher," who expurgated its pages, and dropped a portion of the author's essay on "He Giveth Snow like Wool," while the essay on

"Medicine," as most lay-folk will probably agree, points to a reformation which, in the best sense, is a reform. In the chapter on In the chapter on "The Bench and Bar," the opportunity for pointing out the first lawyers is not thoroughly improved; though we are shown that the early processes were sometimes far from just. The author might have gone farther, for the days of Jeffrey himself must be searched for a parallel to some of the early processes that obtained in the Bay, where nothing was to be done "contrary to God's word," while the magistrate settled what constituted the "word." Nevertheless, with the incoming of pure, untrammelled English law a juster practice arose, and from the atmosphere of travesty and farce pervading the early courts the jurist passed to his present position, which is inferior to none, the purity of the Suffolk bench having become a proverb among all the people of the land.

A study in horticulture lends an interest and charm to the Memorial History, though the venerable writer is wide of his mark in saying that the earliest account that we have of the fruits and flowers of New England is that by Winslow, in 1621. Verrazano is certainly to be remembered here, together with Gosnold, Pring, Waymouth, and Davis, the author of the Popham Journal. As early as 1605, the grapes of Cape Cod were sent home in the form of a preserve for the King of France.

The volume closes with a discussion of "The Charities of Boston," and it certainly cannot be denied, either by friend or foe, that these cover a multitude of sins. The beneficence of Boston has been felt by all classes of people and in the most remote recesses of the world. How often pity gave ere charity began, remains to be known. That the charitable organizations have not done their share to create the evil that they seek to cure, the author of the chapter does not try to prove. In one place he mentions a society called the "Associated Charities," but otherwise it does not appear from these pages that the managers of charities in Boston have made much improvement during the last hundred years, while the class known as "tramps" flourish around Boston as in other parts of the land. Boston now maintains its " Overseers of the Poor," as at the beginning, when every individual was known personally and no unworthy person could escape scrutiny. To-day, however, they are no longer " Overseers," in the spirit of the original institution, as they see nothing, except through other men's eyes. In the meanwhile, as in every other great city in the country, giving goes on, beggary and pauperism growing apace, there being no kind of loose living and no order of improvidence and shiftlessness that does not command a premium among "the charities" of Boston. This, unfortunately, forms part of that general movement toward a return to European life.

There is, nevertheless, one idea of the founders for which the moderns, as yet, have evinced no particular liking, namely, the monarchial idea. This among the founders was somewhat pronounced, especially on those occasions when memory was jogged by the king. It was one of the few ideas of the old world that they brought with them into the wilderness. It was well voiced by Boston's favorite, John Cotton, who declared: "Democracy I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for Church or Commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? As for Monarchy and Aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approved and directed in the Scriptures." Indeed, the aristocratic idea prevails to some extent to-day, Boston, without doubt, being the most exclusive city in the Union; the feeling at the same time being based upon something besides wealth, which in most other cities is the real foundation. Upon the whole, the Memorial History makes a fair exhibition. The results of the two hundred and fifty years are not what the founders desired or anticipated. The early generations are practically rebuked by the people who praise them, yet the modern tendency, in the main, is in the line of true development and growth. What is needed is a continuance of the old local pride, without provincialism; a watchful observation of tendencies, with reference to the elimination of things hurtful and false; a more thorough combination, on the part of the solid men, to keep the name of the ward politician off the fore-front of institutions that should be under the exclusive guardianship of the best intelligence and the highest culture; and the subordination of æsthetic taste and longings after material progress, to the desire for spiritual elevation and moral advancement. With due attention to these things, Boston will be in no danger of falling behind, or of losing her relative rank among the great cities that one day will cover this Continent.

B. F. DECOSTA

A SKETCH OF JOHN W. DRAPER

John William Draper was born in St. Helens, a village near Liverpool, England, May 5, 1811. His father was a minister of the Wesleyan connection, and possessed a great fondness for scientific culture and information, a taste which his son either inherited or early imbibed. The father was in the habit of amusing his leisure by observing the heavens through a Gregorian telescope, and on one occasion his little son, then scarcely more than six years of age, was permitted to look through it at some of the heavenly bodies. The view was to him a matter of absorbing interest. He at once resolved to have such an instrument of his own, and proceeded to execute his determination to construct one like it. He has recorded his earnest, but almost infantile efforts, to realize his purpose-how he exchanged a valued toy with a young friend for a joint of elder from which the pith had been punched out, and, having thus obtained a tube, how he got a tinsmith to cut for him two circular pieces of polished tin to serve as reflectors, and then his disappointment at finding that the instrument would not work—certainly a remarkable instance of the early development of a taste which became both the charm and the labor of his maturer life, through all its changes, and to its latest hour.

His early education was received from private instructors, among whom it seems not unlikely that his father may have borne a prominent part, and contributed to foster the taste for physical observation which his own fondness for such things had originally inspired. At eleven years of age he was sent to a Wesleyan connectional school, where, under the instruction of a somewhat distinguished American teacher, he made good progress in classics and mathematics. His success was so marked that he was one of those appointed to address the conference which met at Leeds, in 1824.

Though he seems to have drawn from this institution some useful discipline, and to have retained a very pleasant impression of its influence upon his intellectual culture, he remained in it but a few years, and was then withdrawn into private instruction again, till upon the opening of the London University, in 1829, he was sent thither to study chemistry, under Dr. Turner, then the most eminent chemist in England.

This was probably only the recognition of the fact that his taste had become strongly developed in the direction of physical research. How long these studies were prosecuted under that distinguished teacher we have no