“When we came within view of Boston,” he writes, “we were all overjoyed, being just upon the point of starving; we put off to land in the long boat, and came ashore near the Castle, which stands about a mile from Boston. The country appeared at first a barren waste, but we found humanity enough when we came among the inhabitants. We lodged the first night at the Castle, and next morning we found our way to Boston Bay over the ice, which was but cold comfort to us after we had been stowed up so many months in a cabin. The air of New England was sharper than at London; which, with the temptation of fresh provisions, made me eat like a second Mariot of Gray’s Inn. The first person that welcomed me to Boston was Mr. Burroughs. He heaped upon me more civilities than I can reckon up, offered to lend me moneys, and made me his bedfellow till I had provided lodgings.” Dunton’s book would have sold merrily in our scandal-loving days. Its personalities are delightful. The following list of his acquaintance is as good as a portrait gallery. “Mr. Phillips, my old correspondent.—He treated me with a noble dinner, and (if I may trust my eyes) is blest with a pretty, obliging wife. I’ll say that for Sam (after dealing with him for some hundred pounds), he is very just, and (as an effect of that) very thriving. I shall add to his character, that he is young and witty, and the most beautiful man in the town of Boston. “The next was Mr. King.—Love was the cause of this gentleman’s long ramble hither. Sure his mistress was made of stone, for King had a voice would have charmed the spheres; he sang “_All hail to the Myrtle Shades_” with a matchless grace. “Another acquaintance was Mr. York. He had his soft minutes as well as other men; and when he unbent his bow, (for he was very industrious,) he treated the fair sex with so much courtship and address, as if loving had been all his trade. “I pass to my good friend Dr. Bullivant—both a gentleman and a physician. As a gentleman, he came of noble family, but his good qualities exceed his birth. He never practises new experiments on his patients, except in dangerous cases, where death must be expelled by death. This is also praiseworthy in him, that to the poor he always prescribes cheap medicines; _not curing them of a consumption in their bodies and sending it into their purses_, nor yet directing them to the East Indies for drugs, when they may have better out of their own gardens. “I proceed in the next place to Mr. Gouge, a linen-draper from London. He is owner of a deal of wit; his brain is a quiver of smart jests. He pretends to live a bachelor, but is no enemy to a pretty woman.”