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midst of fields, orchards, and scattered groves, with a cluster of country-seats just below his perch, and a brother of his craft, J. T. Trowbridge, barely half a mile distant, he overlooks the populous plain and hilly amphitheatre, inclosing with wide sweep the city in whose midst the State-House dome

the original "Hub"shines, gilded into selfrespecting, sun-reflecting splendor. Sheltered by a picturesque sloping red roof, the author of Venetian Life works with unremitting zeal at his editorial and creative tasks in a white study ceiled with panelled wood, and with a huge fire-place surmounted by hand-carved shelves opposite him. One of several inscriptions in quaint text along the frieze of the room is the Shakspearean line,

"From Venice as far as Belmont."

It may remind us of the long flight his talent and his pen have made since

first they became known to us, and of the gain in strength that has resulted from his taking root in American soil, nourished by the same life and scenery which have inspired other writers here. While we are considering the influence of seclusion, we must remember that Whittier has passed most of his life at Amesbury, the village on the Merrimac, and at his present home, Oak Knoll, in Danvers, beyond reach of the madding crowd. Emerson's oftenest-used study has been in Walden woods; and Hawthorne, when his sojournings in the Old Manse and at Lenox and Monte Outo were over, ascended the little thinly wooded hill at his later home, the Wayside-that little hill which came to be known in his household as "the Mount of Vision," where by constant meditative pacings to and fro he wore a narrow trail through the long grass and sweet-fern, which remains to attest his quiet communings with nature.

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JAMES T. FIELDS.

Concord is now to Cambridge what that place was to Boston thirty years ago-a village which unites the unaffected and friendly manners of the country with a vigorous cultivation of those things that give life its finer value; an ally of literary Boston, too self-centred to be called a dependency. Its small community is exceedingly democratic, no man's occupation being inevitably a bar to the best companionship if he is fit for that; although certain natural and necessary distinctions are made on the base of fitness or taste, and strictly observed. That strained pitch of intellectual intensity assigned to it in stereotyped caricaturewhereof the tale about a small boy digging for the infinite in the front yard is a good example-is unknown to the inhabitants. They are busy folk, but exceedingly fond of recreation, and also fond of study, good reading, and conversation which has some object or point, with oppor

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their place, as the thoughts whose course he has traced for thousands of reverent readers. Formerly, too, there was a pleasant habit, now almost given over, of holding popular receptions at his unpretentious dwelling. The towns - folk in general were heartily welcomed there at a sort of afternoon conversation party; some plain refection was set forth; and it was an excellent custom. Only last summer I saw troops of children from the public schools approaching Mr. Emerson's, one day, and learned that they were going there to be received and entertained by the aged poet and his family.

tried to persuade him that the revolt of the colonies had been a fatal error, as cutting off all Americans from the glories of the mother-land. And unless one understands what Concord is, and how closely Emerson has been connected with its life, he misses a significant trait of the Massachusetts literary development. There is in particular a club known as the Social Circle, which has kept up its local reunions for more than a hundred years-having grown originally out of the local Committee of Safety in 1775-which brings together in manly and cordial relation citizens of various callings. Farmer, lawyer, judge, merchant, physician, Such pleasant glimpses as these, and small trader, town-clerk, all meet on an hints of an ideally fraternal commerce equality at one another's houses through between fellow-beings, will be looked for its agency; and the club night is respect-vainly in Boston. There are many de

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EDWARD EVERETT HALE.

points. The social world divides itself into a number of air-tight compartments. If prophets are without honor in their own country, all but a few hundred individuals in Boston should seem to be, socially considered, prophets. Merit is sometimes recognized more quickly here than elsewhere, and sometimes more slowly. Birth as a form of merit is overestimated. Wealth, so far as my observation goes, though it can not open all doors any more than it can in New York, is quite as important, as much worshipped, as in that metropolis, the mercenary tone of which the capital on the Charles affects to despise. In the matter of hospitality it is true that the corporate dignity, already mentioned as a motive to conduct, sometimes leads Bostonians to entertain strangers (especially foreign visitors) with solid cordiality and a consummate grace. But as a rule they show no generous interest in those of their own kith and kin who have done something noteworthy, something which in New York, or Washington, or London, would lead to their being moderately sought for in agreeable circles.

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tations diffuses an atmosphere of general good taste. But there is no spontaneity, and not much warmth. Bostonians know how to dine exquisitely, but they do it with a half-clandestine air. The purely typical inhabitant, you are convinced, is furnished with an icicle in place of a spine, and he is in terror if he thinks a new person is really going to know him. I have known the invitation, "You must dine with me some day," coming from persons otherwise apparently of goodbreeding, to remain in that form for years, without ever ripening into definiteness. An accomplished gentleman, now dead, who had accepted the attentions of some friends in another part of the world, dining, breakfasting, going to parties at their house, which was opened to him as his own on meeting the lady of that house years afterward in Boston, expressed himself delighted that she had come thither. He might well be, for she was every way his equal, and they had been on terms of the most agreeable and intimate friendship; but, by way of showing his boundless and hospitable cordiality, he invited her to call at his house on a Sunday evening after tea, when his wife and himself would go with her to church and give her a place in their pew! This is hardly an extravagant instance. A morbid reserve, a contented selfishness, and distinctions set up with an arbitrariness that is ludicrous, hamper intercourse at all

Such interest, at least, arises only after very marked reputation has given these persons a definite conventional value. It follows that between what calls itself by distinction society, and the literary world, there is no intimate relation. "If we only knew how to get at you literary people," said one of the leaders of the fashionable genealogical coterie, to an author whose fame and habits made it far from a laborious task to find him, "we should be running after you all the time." But the persons who cherish this ardent longing continue to defer its gratification. They are proud of the city's fame in literature, and some of them even cherish amateurish ambitions in the line of writing or painting; but the truth is, that they look upon the artistic world a trifle askance, as a region from which intruders should not be admitted with much freedom. tleman of undoubtedly meritorious descent and ample fortune, finding it needful on one occasion to call upon a well-known author, announced afterward, with pleased surprise, "Oh, he's a gentleman; a perfect gentleman!" Another member of the class usually recognized as aristocratic, sitting for his portrait to a young artist of great talent, who was not conscious of being a pariah, said to him with a benevo

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lence that failed to draw out a responsive | any dearth of essayists who are ready to gratitude: "You're getting on now to a overhaul art, science, philosophy, and point where you ought to marry. I should theology with improved microscopes, and think you'd look around for some young yet leave something to be discovered. In woman in your own walk of life, and the conversations that ensue, such men as settle down with her." Dr. Holmes, Edward Everett Hale, and John Fiske sometimes take a share. Dialectics, however, do not prevent lighter

But whatever its drawbacks may be, the literary part of Boston has had two

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rallying-points which have formed the | diversion on occasions, and the 1st of centres of many profitable gatheringsthe house of Mr. Fields, and that of Mr. John T. Sargent, where the Chestnut Street Club, at one time more widely known as the Radical Club, assembles. Skeptics insist that the instinct of persecution survives in Boston, manifesting itself in the prevalent fondness for making people "read a paper" or listen to one. But cards to Mrs. Sargent's Mondays are greatly prized, nevertheless, and there is never

May has often been celebrated in these drawing-rooms with recitation of original verses by ladies and gentlemen, recalling, one might say, the flights of Crescembini's Arcadians, or Lorenzo de' Medici's May-songs. Illustrious company is seen there, for the hostess is untiring in her effort to assemble the best. One memorable occasion I recall, when Whittier, seldom seen in town, had been lured from his shy retirement to aid in honoring the

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