The Hancock estate, as we have been accustomed to see it of late years, is greatly reduced from its original dimensions, and shorn of much of its ancient glory.[10] The property, in Mr. Thomas Hancock's time, extended on the east to the bend in Mount Vernon Street, including, of course, the whole of the grounds now occupied by the State House,[11]--on the west to Joy Street, called Hancock Street on the ancient plan of the estate now before us,--and in the rear about to what is now Derne Street, on the north side of Beacon Hill, and comprising on that side all the land through which Mount Vernon Street now runs, for the whole distance from Joy Street to Beacon-Hill Place. Thus was included a large part, too, of the site of the present reservoir on Derne Street, a portion of which, being the last of the estate sold up to the present year, was purchased by the city from the late John Hancock, Esq., some ten or twelve years ago. The two large wings of the house--the one on the east side containing an elegant ball-room, and that on the west side comprising the kitchen and other domestic offices--have long ago disappeared. The centre of the mansion, however, remains nearly intact, and with its antique furniture, stately old pictures, and the quaint, but comfortable appointments of the past century, still suffices to bring up to the mind of the visitor the most vivid and interesting reminiscences both of our Colonial and Revolutionary history. The central and principal portion of the house, which remains entire, is a very perfect and interesting specimen of the stateliest kind of our provincial domestic architecture of the last century. There are several other houses of a similar design still standing in the more important sea-port towns of New England. The West House, on Essex Street, in Salem, has but lately disappeared; but another in that neighborhood, the Collins House in Danvers, (now the property of Mr. F. Peabody, of Salem,) the Dalton House, on State Street, Newburyport, the Langdon House, (now the residence of the Reverend Dr. Charles Burroughs,) in Portsmouth, N. H., and the Gilman House, in Exeter, N. H., removed, not long since, to make way for the new Town Hall, were all almost identical with this in the leading features of their design. A broad front-door opening from a handsome flight of stone steps, and garnished with pillars and a highly ornamental door-head, a central window, also somewhat ornamented, over it, and four other windows in each story, two being on either side of the centre, a main roof-cornice enriched with carved modillions, a high and double-pitched or "gambrel" roof with bold projecting dormer-windows rising out of it, and a carved balcony-railing inclosing the upper or flatter portion of the roof, are features common to them all. The details of the Hancock House are all classical and correct; they were doubtless executed by the master-builder of the day