The effort, however, to establish a European standard of living in the wilderness was too great. The intellectual and æsthetic enjoyments of life had to be laid aside until the practical duties of subduing the wilderness had been fulfilled. All this is well enough understood. But let us suppose for a moment that the North American continent had consisted of that strip of land between the ocean and the Appalachian range of mountains, beyond which we will place the Pacific. By 1776 practically all of this territory was settled as peacefully as was England itself. In fact, much of it looked like England. Boston was to all intents and purposes identical with an English provincial town. Travelers reported that much of the New England countryside was indistinguishable from that of old England. Wealth had accumulated; colleges had been erected; the arts were beginning to flourish. In the 1750’s the theater in New York offered a better repertoire than could be found in any English provincial city of the time, and I am not sure but as good as that of London itself, certainly better than can be heard some years in New York now. Mr. and Mrs. Hallam, actors of note in London, arrived in the colonies with their company[Pg 251] and remained twenty years. They acted in plays of Shakespeare, Addison, Rowe, Congreve, Farquhar, Steele, and others; and in 1754 New York had a season in which twenty-one different plays, the cream of English dramatic literature up to that time, were heard by the public. Such plays were also given in such a surprising list of places as Philadelphia, Williamsburg, Annapolis, Hobb’s Hole, Port Tobacco, Upper Marlborough, Petersburg, and Fredericksburg. The theatrical and musical life of Charleston could hardly have been excelled, if it was, in any provincial town in England.