Thursday.—­Mr. Hanson drove me to Cambridge, to see the Universities.  This is a clean, well-built town, with 8000 or 9000 inhabitants.  The expense of education is 300 dollars; and if that cannot be paid, the students are educated free, subject to instructing others a little.  There is no barrier here to the poorest man’s son becoming the President, as free-schools abound.  We then drove to Mount Auburn, a cemetery delightfully situated about five miles from Boston.  They pay 4000 dollars for a lot for a family burying-place.  Here some eminent men are interred.  There are some beautiful walks over this one-hundred-acres plot of ground.  We then drove round by Charlestown, a place of 10,000 inhabitants, where the Bostonians reside, well-situated; and so on to Bunker-hill Monument, where the battle was fought in 1775, when General James Warren fell:  it is a very substantial mark of Jonathan conquering John.  Bull.  I then visited the Massachusetts State-house:  the Congress-house and Representatives are very commodious.  I ascended the top, which gives a most commanding view of the whole city:  it was very clear, and the view was most extensive.  Like New York, it is upon an island, surrounded (except a few yards) with the River Charles and the Ocean.  Home to dinner, and gave my friends T. Cochrane and Mr. Schofield two bottles of champagne, it being my last day in the States.  We then proceeded to Perkins’s Institution for the Blind, managed by my fellow-passenger, Dr. Howe.  We saw the gifted Laura Bridgman, whose biography I give elsewhere.[A] She is an interesting-looking girl, fifteen years old, deaf, dumb, blind, and no smell:  still Providence makes her contented and happy:  she can read and write, and understand geography with her fingers, and is blessed with the knowledge of Divine grace.  It was truly interesting and gratifying to see the blind girls read and write and work, all so clean and neat in their persons, and apparently happy.  Also the boys are instructed in a similar way, and, when ready, put out to some trade; and, if no master can be found, they instruct them in the institution to make mattresses, chair-bottoms, &c., several of whom I saw working.  We then visited South Boston State Hospital for the Insane, at the head of which is Dr. Stedman, who conducts it admirably on the enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness, and evinces a confidence and apparent trust even in mad people.  Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or hall; and, as we walked along, the patients flocked round us unrestrained, with all sorts of stories.  I had ten minutes’ talk with an elderly lady, who had a great many scraps of finery, of gauze, &c., which gave her a strange appearance:  she fancied she was the hostess of the mansion.  Another I talked to said she was Queen of the States.  Another poor fellow, gentlemanly in appearance, said it was a hard run between him and Prince Albert who should have the Queen of England.  He had written and