On Thursday we took the car into Boston and ascended the monument on Bunker’s Hill, 290 steps up a dark spiral staircase. Lowell had never been up it before, nor indeed has any native as far as I can find out. The view at the top repays you thoroughly for the grind with the thermometer at eighty in the shade. Boston Harbour, where the tea was thrown out of the English ships in 1775, and> the whole town and suburbs lie below you like a map, and are very striking. After descending we hunted up a number of people, including young Holmes, our Colonel, who was as charming as ever, absorbed in his law at which he is doing famously, and resolved in his first holiday to revisit England. He came out to dine, and fraternised immensely with R----, and with him a young Howells, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, whom Conway had brought to our house years ago, and I had entirely forgotten. However he is a very nice fellow, and I don’t think I betrayed my obliviousness. Next day, Friday, we had a long country drive in the morning through broad avenues lined with three fascinating wooden houses, each standing with plenty of elbow-room in its own grounds, up to a wooded hill from which we got a splendid view of the city. Then I went into Boston and called on the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, who is one of the best talkers I ever met, and quite worthy to be the Colonel’s father. He is one of Motley’s oldest friends, and deeply grieved, as all good men here, at his recall. His chief talk was of his memories of his English visits, and the folk he met, and so I find it with all the best men and women here. Notwithstanding the bitterness which our press created during the war, I am convinced that with a very little tact and judicious handling on our side the international relations may be easily made all we can wish as far as New England is concerned. Afterwards I sauntered about the town, looking at some good statues in their park (Boston Common), and letting the place sink into me. The Common is about the size, I should say, of Green Park, but of a regular shape. It lies on the side of a hill at the top of which are the State House and other public buildings and private houses. It is well wooded with fine American and English elms (pre-revolutionary, they say, but I don’t believe it. They are not used to our elms, and I doubt whether any of these are 100 years old) on the upper part and along the sides; the middle is a great playground for the boys, who are diligent there all day at base-ball, our rounders, which I should think must spoil the enjoyment of the place for ladies and children. However they can always take to the pretty gardens at the lower end, in which is a very fine equestrian statue of Washington, and one of Everett by Story, by no means fine in my opinion. How should it be, when he insisted on being taken with his arm right up in the air, his favourite attitude in speaking, and stands up in that attitude