waistcoats, wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of deportment, as if each one were everybody’s grandfather.  I have frequently observed, in old English towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully, and genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in solitude.  Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the scholars of the Boston Charity-School, who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee-breeches, and with bands at their necks,—­perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries ago.

On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and beheld its irregular square already well-covered with booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles.  It was market-day.  The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages.  Later in the forenoon there was a much greater variety of merchandise:  basket-work, both for fancy and use; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair.  I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the town.  A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another in the square; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibition in another:  so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my former ones.  Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph’s looked benignantly down; and I fancied that it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height, and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard.

One thing more.  They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town; and (what could hardly be expected of an English community) seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely celebrated and best-remembered battle-field.

* * * * *

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF A STRENGTH-SEEKER.

“There goes the smallest fellow in our class.”

I was crossing one of the paths that intersect the college green of old Harvard when this remark fell upon my ears.  Looking up, I saw two stalwart Freshmen on their way to recitation, one of whom had called the other’s attention to my humble self by this observation, reminding me of a distinction which I did not covet.