The monument is 221-1/6 feet high--a fact fully realized only by climbing the 259 steps of the spiral staircase of stone in the interior of the shaft which leads to a small chamber near the apex, from which four windows look out upon the surrounding country--a superb vista. The cost of this monument was $150,000. In the Public Gardens, in the Back Bay district, across from Commonwealth avenue, may be seen one of the largest pieces of statuary in America, and, according to some connoisseurs, the handsomest in Boston. This is Ball's huge statue of Washington, which measures twenty-two feet in height. The statue was unveiled in 1869, and it is said that not a stroke of work was laid upon it by any hand of artisan or artist outside of Massachusetts. The Beacon street side of the Public Gardens contains another famous statue--that of Edward Everett, by W. W. Story. Other great citizens whose memory has been perpetuated in life-like marble are Samuel Adams, William Lloyd Garrison and Colonel William Prescott. The Emancipation Group is a duplicate of the "Freedman's Memorial" statue in Washington. The soldiers' monuments in Dorchester, Charlestown, Roxbury, West Roxbury and Brighton commemorate the unnamed, uncounted, but not unhonored dead who laid down their lives on the battlefields of the Civil War. "The bravely dumb who did their deed, And scorned to blot it with a name; Men of the plain, heroic breed, Who loved Heaven's silence more than fame." An interesting object is the Ether Monument on the Arlington street side of the Public Gardens erected in recognition of the fact that it was in the Massachusetts General Hospital--in the face of terrible opposition and coldness and discouragement, as history tells us, though the marble does not--that Dr. Sims first gave the world his wonderful discovery of the power of ether to cause insensibility to pain. That there should be so many of these fine pieces in Boston's parks and public places is matter for congratulation but scarcely for surprise. As a patron of music, literature, art and all the external graces of civilization she has so long and so easily held her supremacy that one is half inclined to believe that at least a delegation of the Muses, if not the whole sisterhood, had exchanged the lonely and unappreciated grandeur of Parnassus for a seat on one of Boston's three hills. The Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest musical society in the United States; the Harvard Musical Association; the famous Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Orpheus Club, speak--and right musically--of Boston's love for the art of which Cecilia was patron saint. Music Hall, an immense edifice near Tremont street, is the home of music in Boston. Here the symphony concerts are held weekly, and here all the musical "stars" whose orbit includes Boston make their first appearance before a critical "Hub" audience. Its great organ, with over 5,000 pipes, is one of the largest ever made.