We will now endeavor to describe the appearance of the hill, at the commencement of the American Revolution, with the beacon on its top, from which it took its name, consisting of a tall mast sixty feet in height, erected in 1635, with an iron crane projecting from its side, supporting an iron pot. The mast was placed on cross-timbers, with a stone foundation, supported by braces, and provided with cross-sticks serving as a ladder for ascending to the crane. It remained until 1776, when it was destroyed by the British; but was replaced in 1790 by a monument, inclosed in a space six rods square, where it remained until 1811. It was surmounted by an eagle, which now surmounts the speaker's desk in the hall of the House of Representatives, and had tablets upon its four sides with inscriptions commemorative of Revolutionary events. It stood nearly opposite the southeast corner of the reservoir lot, upon the site of No. 82 Temple Street, and its foundation was sixty feet higher up in the air than the present level of that street. The lot was sold, in 1811, for the miserable pittance of _eighty cents_ per square foot! Starting upon our pedestrian tour from the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, where now stands the Albion, was an acre lot owned by the heirs of James Penn, a selectman of the town, and a ruling elder in the First Church, which stood in State Street upon the site of Brazer's Building. The parsonage stood opposite, upon the site of the Merchants Bank Building, and extended with its garden to Dock Square, the water flowing up nearly to the base of the Samuel Adams statue. Next comes a half-acre lot owned by Samuel Eliot, grandfather of President Eliot of Harvard University. Then follows a second half-acre lot owned by the heirs of the Reverend James Allen, fifth minister of the First Church, who, in his day, as will be shown in the sequel, owned a larger portion of the surface of Boston than any other man, being owner of thirty-seven of the seven hundred acres which inclosed the territory of the town. His name is perpetuated in the street of that name bounding the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds. Somerset Street was laid out through it. The Congregational House, Jacob Sleeper Hall, and Boston University Building, which occupies the former site of the First Baptist Church, under the pastorship of the Reverend Rollin H. Neale, stand upon it. Next comes Governor James Bowdoin's two-acre pasture, extending from the last-named street to Mount Vernon Street, and northerly to Allston Street; the upper part of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place were laid out through it; the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, formerly Freeman-place Chapel, built by the Second Church, under the pastoral care of the Reverend Chandler Robbins, and afterwards occupied by the First Presbyterian Church, the Church of the Disciples, the Brattle-square Church, the Old South Church, and the First Reformed