historic old place that "it is dangerous to turn a corner suddenly for fear of running over some first-class saint, philosopher or sage." THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE. The outer verge of Boston Harbor may be described as protected on the south by the long projection of Nantasket Beach, while on the northern side there comes out, as if to meet it, another curiously-formed peninsula, making the bluffs of Winthrop, and a strip beyond terminating in the rounded headland of Point Shirley. Deer Island, almost connected with the Point, stretches farther, and we were anciently told it was so called "because of the deare who often swim thither from the maine when they are chased by the wolves." All these places are popular resorts, and their odd formations assist in making the Boston surroundings picturesque. Some distance up the coast, and eleven miles from Boston, is the shoemaking city of Lynn, with seventy thousand people, the flourishing society of the "Knights of St. Crispin" ruling the shoemakers' "teams" and largely running the politics of the town. Most of the work is done by machinery, there being over two hundred factories, making more women's shoes than any other place in the country. The first colonists were brought by their pastor from Lynn-Regis, England, in 1629, and thus the town was named. It spreads broadly along the water-front, its attractive City Hall seen from afar, and many ornamental villas adorning the shore. Out beyond it, thrust into the sea, is the long, low and narrow sand-strip barely a hundred yards wide, leading for nearly four miles to Nahant. This is a most curious formation, the name meaning the "Lovers' Walk," a mass of rocks and soil at the outer end of the sand-strip covering nearly five hundred acres, and crowned with villas, the neat tower of a pretty white church rising on the highest part near the centre. The Bostonians have made Nahant, thus surrounded by the ocean, one of their most fashionable suburban sections, and it is popularly known as "Cold Roast Boston." This strange rocky promontory was originally bought from the Sagamore Poquanum for a suit of clothes, and it is now valued at over $10,000,000. Many are the poems written about this curious projection, and N. P. Willis says of it: "If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the length of a continent, with one arm stretched out into the midst of the sea, the spot to which I would transport you, reader mine, would be, as it were, in the palm of the giant's hand." Invocations have been addressed to Nahant by Longfellow, Whittier and Mrs. Sigourney; there Longfellow wrote part of _Hiawatha_, Motley began his _Dutch Republic_, Prescott wrote his Spanish histories, and Agassiz composed _Brazil_.