The quaint, village-like, and yet all-regal Boston of the past! Perhaps this was one of the most interesting pages of its life history, before the royal insolence had roused in it an answering manhood; when fashion scrupulously followed a far-away court over sea, and the daily life of luxurious British officials was so distinct from that of the Puritan stratum of society. In England, public affairs seesawed between the policies of George II. and Walpole, and from the world of letters, Richardson and Fielding were amusing the young bloods of the day, and by no means toughening their moral fibre. The leisure of the bold Britons who ruled over us was not for a moment poisoned by fear of American defection from the royal mother-land. Rather, for men like Frankland, was this loitering in western airs their _Wanderjahr_, a pleasant exile, whence they would some day return, with treasures of new experience, to sit down beside the English hearthstone, and, Othello-like, rehearse the wonders they had seen. Meantime, they walked the streets, bravely attired in small-clothes and wigs, discussing the troubles brewing with the French, and seeking, so far as they might, to build up a miniature England within the savage-girdled settlements of the New World. Sir Harry Frankland stands out from the faint portraiture of the time as one of the most knightly souls of all. He was young, blest with an attractive presence, and his tastes were those of the gentleman and the scholar. That he was sensitive and refined even to the point of evincing that feminine strain of temperament so fascinating in a manly man, is very apparent from the fragmentary records of his life, but he lacked no sturdiness of temper or demeanor. [Illustration] [Illustration: Frankland] [Illustration]