Boston is just like other places of its size;—­only perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities.  I’ll tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston.  It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be drained.  If it would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the gentleman has quoted.  There can never be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth.—­I have observed, by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities situated within the intellectual basin, or suction-range, of one large one, of the pretensions of any other.  Don’t you see why?  Because their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big city,—­their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there.  I hate little toad-eating cities.

—­Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?—­Oh,—­an example?  Did you ever see a bear-trap?  Never?  Well, shouldn’t you like to see me put my foot into one?  With sentiments of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused.

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming.  If they have an old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their tomahawks,)—­if they have, scattered about, those mighty square houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,—­if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the side-walk, —­if they have a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming decay,—­I think I could go to pieces, after my life’s work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be rocked to sleep in.  I visit such spots always with infinite delight.  My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties.  Let a man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day and the stars by night.