well got up, fine stout fellows—­who entered, and filled two of the carriages.  On inquiring who kept the hounds, and if they had good runs, a sly smile stole across my friend’s cheek as he told me they were merely the firemen of the city going to fraternize with the ditto ditto of Boston.  It stupidly never occurred to me to ask him whether any provision was made in case of a quiet little fire developing itself during their absence, for their number was legion, and as active, daring, orderly-looking fellows as ever I set eyes upon.  Jolly apopletic aldermen of our capital may forsake the green fat of their soup-making deity, to be feasted by their Parisian fraternity, without inconvenience to anybody, except it be to their fellow-passengers in the steamer upon their return, if they have been over-fed and have not tempest-tried organs of digestion.  But a useful body like firemen migrating should, I confess, have suggested to me the propriety of asking what substitutes were left to perform, if need be, their useful duties; not having done so, I am constrained to leave this important point in its present painful obscurity.

A thundering whistle and a cloud of steam announce the top is off the kettle, and that we have reached Boston.  Wishing to take my own luggage in a hackney, I found that, however valuable for security the ticketing system may be, it was, under circumstances like mine at present, painfully trying to patience.  In three-quarters of an hour, however, I managed to get hold of it, and then, by way of improving my temper, I ascertained that one of my boxes was in a state of “pretty considerable all mighty smash.”  At last I got off with my goods and chattels, and having seen quite enough of the American palace-hotels and their bountifully-spread tables, and of the unrivalled energy with which the meals are despatched; remembering, also, how frequently the drum of my ears had been distracted by the eternal rattling and crackling of plates and dishes for a couple of hundred people, and how my olfactories had suffered from the mixed odours of the kitchen produce, I declined going to the palatial Revere House, which is one of the best hotels in the Union, and put up at a house of less pretensions, where I found both quiet and comfort.

To write a description of Boston, when so many others have done so far better than I can pretend to do, and when voluminous gazetteers record almost every particular, would be drawing most unreasonably upon the patience of a reader, and might further be considered as inferring a doubt of his acquaintance with, I might almost say, a hackneyed subject.  I shall, therefore, only inflict a few short observations to refresh his memory.  The most striking feature in Boston, to my mind, is the common or park, inasmuch as it is the only piece of ground in or attached to any city which I saw deserving the name of a park.  It was originally a town cow-pasture, and called the Tower Fields.  The size is about fifty acres; it is