In conversation with an antiquarian friend, not long ago, we agreed, that very much less was generally known of Peter Faneuil, than of almost any other great, public benefactor. His name, nevertheless, is inseparably associated, with the cradle of American liberty. Drs. Eliot and Allen, in their Biographical Dictionaries, have passed him over, very slightingly, the former finishing up this noble-hearted Huguenot, with fifteen lines; and the latter, with eight; while not a few of their pages have been devoted, to the very dullest doctors of the drowsiest theology, and to-- "Names ignoble, born to be forgot." Mr. Farmer, in his Genealogical Register, does not seem to be aware, that the name of Faneuil existed, for he has not even found a niche for it there. His Register, I am aware, purports to be a register of the "_First Settlers_." But he has found room for the Baudouins (Bowdoins) and their descendants. They also were Huguenots; and came hither, with the Faneuils, after 1685. One of that family, as will be more fully shown, Claude Baudoin, presented Peter Faneuil in baptism. Yet, such was the public sense of Peter's favors, _when they were green_, that John Lovell--that same Master Lovell, who retired with the British army, in 1776--delivered, under an appointment of the town, an oration, to commemorate the virtues, and laud the munificence of Peter Faneuil. Such, in truth, was the very first occasion, upon which the citizens were summoned to listen to the voice of an orator, in Faneuil Hall; and then, in honor of him, who perfected the noble work, at his own proper cost, and whose death so speedily followed its completion--for a noble work assuredly it was, relatively to the times, in which it was wrought. The Faneuils were Huguenots. The original pronunciation of this patronymic must have been somewhat different from the present: there was an excusable _naïveté_, in the inquiry of a rural visitant of the city--if a well known mechanical establishment, with a tall, tubular chimney, were not _Funnel_ Hall? After the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by Louis XIV., in 1685, the Faneuils, in common with many other Huguenots of France,--the Baudouins, the Bernons, the Sigourneys, the Boudinots, the Pringles, the Hugers, the Boutineaus, the Jays, the Laurenses, the Manigaults, the Marions, the Prioleaus, and many others, came to these North American shores--as our pilgrim fathers came--to worship God, in security, and according to their consciences. Many of these persecuted men conferred, upon their adopted home, those blessings, which the exercise of their talents, and the influence of their characters, and of the talents and characters of their descendants have confirmed to our common country, for many generations.