left Boston, in 1774, for England, and never returned to his native land.  He wrote to his agent in Boston, Gardner Greene (whose mansion subsequently stood upon the enclosure in Pemberton Square, surrounded by a garden of two and a quarter acres, for which he paid thirty-three thousand dollars), to sell the twenty-acre pasture for the best price which could be obtained.  After a delay of some time he sold it, in 1796, for eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars; equivalent to nine hundred dollars per acre, or two cents per square foot.  It is a singular fact that a record title to only two and a half of the twenty acres could be found.  It was purchased by the Mount Vernon Proprietors, consisting of Jonathan Mason, three tenths; Harrison Gray Otis, three tenths; Benjamin Joy, two tenths; and Henry Jackson, two tenths.  The barberry bushes speedily disappeared after the Copley sale.  The southerly part of Charles Street was laid out through it.  And the first railroad in the United States was here employed.  It was gravitation in principle.  An inclined plane was laid from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars slid down, emptying their loads into the water at the foot and drawing the empty cars upward.  The apex of the hill was in the rear of the Capitol near the junction of Mount Vernon and Temple Streets, and was about sixty feet above the present level of that locality, and about even with the roof of the Capitol.  The level at the corner of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place has been reduced about thirty feet, and at the northeast corner of the reservoir 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 Leverett-street 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.

[Illustration:  MAP OF BEACON HILL AND WEST END IN BOSTON]

Bounded southerly on Copley’s pasture, westerly on Charles River, and northerly on Cambridge Street, was Zachariah Phillips’s nine-acre pasture, which extended easterly to Grove Street; for which he paid one hundred pounds sterling, equivalent to fifty dollars per acre.  The northerly parts of Charles and West Cedar Streets, and the westerly parts of May and Phillips Streets have been laid out through it.  The Twelfth Baptist Church, formerly under the pastorship of the Reverend Samuel Snowdon, stands upon it.  Proceeding easterly was the sixteen-and-a-half-acre pasture of the Reverend James Allen, before alluded to as the greatest landowner in the town of Boston, for which he paid one hundred and fifty pounds, New-England currency, equivalent to twenty-two dollars per acre.  It bounded southerly on Copley’s, Joy’s