Boston, viewed without regard to its history, is indeed "Hamlet presented without the part of Hamlet." It would be interesting to conjecture what the city's present place and condition might be, had Governor Winthrop's and Deputy-Governor Dudley's plan of making "New-towne"--the Cambridge of to-day--the Bay Colony's principal settlement, been executed. Instead, and fortunately, Governor Winthrop became convinced of the superiority of Boston as an embryo "county seat." "Trimountain," as it was first called, was bought in 1630 from Rev. William Blackstone, who dwelt somewhere between the Charles River and what is now Louisburg Square, and held the proprietary right of the entire Boston Peninsula--a sort of American Selkirk, "monarch of all he surveyed, and whose right there was none to dispute." He was "bought off," however, for the modest sum of _£_30, and retired to what was then the wilderness, on the banks of the Blackstone River--named after him--and left "Trimountain" to the settlers. Then Boston began to grow, almost with the quickness of Jack's fabled beanstalk. Always one of the most important of colonial towns, it conducted itself in sturdy Puritan style, fearing God, honoring the King--with reservations--burning witches and Quakers, waxing prosperous on codfish, and placing education above every earthly thing in value, until the exciting events of the Revolution, which has left behind it relics which make Boston a veritable "old curiosity shop" for the antiquarian, or indeed the ordinary loyal American, who can spend a happy day, or week, or month, prowling around the picturesque narrow streets, crooked as the proverbial ram's horn, of Old Boston. He will perhaps turn first, as I did, to the "cradle of Liberty"--Faneuil Hall. A slight shock will await him, possibly, in the discovery that under the ancient structure, round which hover so many imperishable memories of America's early struggles for freedom, is a market-house, where thrifty housewives and still more thrifty farmers chaffer, chat and drive bargains the year round, and which brings into the city a comfortable annual income of $20,000. But the presence of the money-changers in the temple of Freedom does not disturb the "solid men of Boston," who are practical as well as public-spirited. The market itself is as old as the hall, which was erected by the city in 1762, to take the place of the old market-house, which Peter Faneuil had built at his own expense and presented to the city in 1742, and which was burned down in 1761.