moment a heavy wave struck the boat, drenching us plentifully, but not filling her, and bounding up, staggering a little, she dashed on, and with another like slap or two, we were over and in fairly smooth water. Had the boat struck bottom, she would have been instantly dashed to pieces and we should have met the sad fate of others who, before and since, have been drowned and lost to sight forever in that seething tide. In a conversation with a very eminent English novelist, of profounder skill and more permanent fame, in my opinion, than any other since Scott, he expressed his surprise at the solid aspect of the city of Boston, in which we had met, on the day after his arrival in this country, upon his first lecturing tour. He had enjoyed the best opportunities of viewing "men and cities," not only in Europe, but in various parts of the farther East. I took the liberty of replying that Boston had been growing nearly two centuries and a half, and inquired if he expected to see wigwams, or even those slighter fabrics which betoken the earlier stages of advancing colonization. He said, "No, of course not; but it had quite as substantial an appearance as an English city." But it is to be remembered that the persons who came to this country, at first, and from time to time, afterwards, were already civilized, and brought with them and transmitted to their descendants much of the knowledge and many of the habits, peculiarities, and even the traditions of their ancestors "at home." Our town, too, looked old; though far from being so substantially built as Boston.