At Boston I found friends ready to receive us with open arms, though they were friends we had never known before.  I own that I felt myself burdened with much nervous anxiety at my first introduction to men and women in Boston.  I knew what the feeling there was with reference to England, and I knew also how impossible it is for an Englishman to hold his tongue and submit to dispraise of England.  As for going among a people whose whole minds were filled with affairs of the war, and saying nothing about the war, I knew that no resolution to such an effect could be carried out.  If one could not trust one’s self to speak, one should have stayed at home in England.  I will here state that I always did speak out openly what I thought and felt, and that though I encountered very strong—­sometimes almost fierce—­opposition, I never was subjected to anything that was personally disagreeable to me.

In September we did not stay above a week in Boston, having been fairly driven out of it by the musquitoes.  I had been told that I should find nobody in Boston whom I cared to see, as everybody was habitually out of town during the heat of the latter summer and early autumn; but this was not so.  The war and attendant turmoils of war had made the season of vacation shorter than usual, and most of those for whom I asked were back at their posts.  I know no place at which an Englishman may drop down suddenly among a pleasanter circle of acquaintance, or find himself with a more clever set of men, than he can do at Boston.  I confess that in this respect I think that but few towns are at present more fortunately circumstanced than the capital of the Bay State, as Massachusetts is called, and that very few towns make a better use of their advantages.  Boston has a right to be proud of what it has done for the world of letters.  It is proud; but I have not found that its pride was carried too far.

Boston is not in itself a fine city, but it is a very pleasant city.  They say that the harbor is very grand and very beautiful.  It certainly is not so fine as that of Portland, in a nautical point of view, and as certainly it is not as beautiful.  It is the entrance from the sea into Boston of which people say so much; but I did not think it quite worthy of all I had heard.  In such matters, however, much depends on the peculiar light in which scenery is seen.  An evening light is generally the best for all landscapes; and I did not see the entrance to Boston harbor by an evening light.  It was not the beauty of the harbor of which I thought the most, but of the tea which had been sunk there, and of all that came of that successful speculation.  Few towns now standing have a right to be more proud of their antecedents than Boston.