The approach to Boston, either by sea or land, gives to it an extremely bold and picturesque character. It is spread over a series of lofty heights, nearly insulated, and is surrounded by a marshy level running from the highlands on the main, to which the city is united by a very narrow isthmus to the southward.

The lofty dome of its State-house, and the numerous spires and towers of its churches, rising between two and three hundred feet above the surrounding level of either land or sea, combine to produce a coup d’oeil more imposing than is presented by either New York or Philadelphia.

The streets of the city generally are narrow and irregular, following the windings of the lofty hills over which it is spread, and having more the air of an old English county-town than any place I have yet seen in the country.

Its wharfs are spacious and well constructed, and it is not without surprise that one views the evidently rapid growth of these best evidences of prosperous commerce. I observed in my walks lines of substantial granite-built warehouses and quays, newly redeemed from the water: all were in occupation; tiers of vessels of every kind thronged them; and the inner harbour was thick with masts.

The most modern quarter of the city lies to the west, surrounding the park, or common, as it is termed,an ancient reserve of some sixty acres, the property of the citizens, beautifully situated and tastefully laid out. It is bordered on the lower side by a mall of venerable-looking elms; has a pretty pond of water under a rising ground near its centre, the remains of an English fort; and open to the front is the Charles River.

On three sides, this common is flanked by very fine streets, having houses of the largest class, well built, and kept with a right English spirit as far as regards the scrupulous cleanliness of the entrances, areas, and windows. The English are a window-cleaning race, and nowhere have I observed this habit so closely inherited as here. Overlooking this common, too, is the State-house; and, on a line with it, the mansion of its patriot founder, Mr. Hancock, a venerable stone-built edifice, raised upon a terrace withdrawn a few yards from the line of the present street. The generous character of its first owner has made this house an object of great interest, and it is to be hoped the citizens will look carefully to its preservation as a worthy fellow to Fanieul Hall, for by no one was the “cradle of Liberty" more carefully tended than by the owner of “Hancock House.”

Here, as in the other great cities of the Union, upon a close survey, I found the prevailing impression on my mind to be surprise at the apparent rapidity of increase made manifest in the great number of buildings either just completed or in progress. If the possession of inexhaustible supplies of the finest granite, marble, and all other material, be accompanied with taste and spirit in their use, the future buildings of this city will have an air of grandeur and stability superior to those of any other in the States.

To reach the surrounding country in any direction from the peninsula the city occupies, one of its great bridges must be crossed. Of these there are six, besides the Western Avenue as it is called, a dam of vast extent; and they form the peculiarities of this place, to a stranger, most curious, and, in truth, most pleasing. By day, they form agreeable walks or rides, offering a variety of charming views; and, if crossed on a dark night, when their interminable lines of lamps are beheld radiating, as it were, from one centre, and multiplied by reflection on the surrounding waters, the effect is perfectly magical. The stars show dimly in comparison: and casting your eyes downward, it appears as though you beheld another and a brighter sky glittering beneath your feet.

The great dam rises about five feet above the tide, is provided with enormous flood-gates, and in length is something over a mile and a half. The length of the other bridges varies from two thousand five hundred to one thousand four hundred feet.

Crossing at any one of these points, you gain the open heights upon the main. Here you are first struck by the aspect of the soil, everywhere having huge masses of dark rock protruded above its surface. The country is said to be poor: of this I cannot judge, but I know it to be beautiful. It is everywhere undulating, and often broken in the wildest and most tropical manner. Like the interior of Herefordshire, it is cut up in all directions by rural lanes, bordered by stone walls and high hedges, and dotted thickly with handsome houses, whose verandahs of bright green, and whitened walls, show well amidst the luxuriant foliage by which they are commonly surrounded.

About five miles from the city are a couple of delightful pieces of water, called Jamaica and Fresh-ponds; each bordered by wood, lawn, and meadow, naturally disposed in the most attractive manner. At the last-named pond,which sounds unworthily on my ear when applied to a piece of water covering a surface of two hundred and fifty acres,I passed an afternoon during the period of my first visit here.

We sailed about, exploring every harbour of the little sea, caught our fish for dinner, and by the hotel were furnished with a well-broiled chicken and a good glass of champagne, with ice worthy of being dissolved in such liquor. I fell premeditatedly in love with the place; and D , who was on the look-out for a location, and something hard to please withal, had already selected a site for building: but, alas! even Paradise, before the mission of St. Patrick, had serpents; and the delightful copses and rich meadows of Fresh-pond are, it appears, the haunts especially favoured by the incarnation of all Egyptian plagues, musquitoes.

During the winter this is a great resort of the lovers of bandy and skating; and from this ample reservoir is taken that transparent ice which gladdens the eyes and cools the throat of the dust-dried traveller throughout this part of the State. Nor is its grateful service confined to these limits; for cargoes of it are, during the spring, regularly shipped to the Havannah, New Orleans, Mobile, &c.; and,for where will enterprise find limits?this very season has a shipment of three hundred tons of the congealed waters of this pond of Massachusetts been consigned to Calcutta. Ice floating on the Ganges! How old Gunga will shiver and shake his ears when the first crystal offering is dropped on his hot bosom!

Wild as the idea may at first appear of keeping such a commodity for a voyage of probably a hundred days in such latitudes, I am informed the speculator is assured, that with an ordinary run, enough of his cargo may be landed to pay a good freight.

Near to this pond lies another favourite spot of mine, “Mount Auburn;” a tract of woodland, bordering on Charles River, appropriated and consecrated as a cemetery, on the plan of “Pere la Chaise,” but having natural attributes for such a purpose infinitely superior. It is covered by a thick growth of the finest forest-trees, of singular variety; and presents a surface, now gently undulating in hill and dale, now broken into deep ravines, or towered over by bold rocky elevations; and, intersecting the whole space from north to south, runs a natural terrace, having a surface so well and evenly levelled that one almost doubts its being other than the work of art.

It takes its name from a lofty eminence, which, rising high over the surrounding level, commands as fine a view as any spot in the vicinity. Winding and well-kept avenues intersect the ground in all directions, giving it an appearance of much greater extent than it in reality possesses, and rendering the most secluded spot easy of access to those who desire to

“Choose their ground,
And take their rest.”

The ostentatious mausoleum may be placed by a broad carriage avenue, where its hollow walls will reverberate to every passing triumph of the tomb; the quiet and the lowly can build their humbler dwelling in some secluded nook, bordered by a narrow path the foot of affection alone will seek to tread, and where no heavier sound will ever echo!

The perpetual right of sepulture may be purchased of the company whose property the place is; and already a number of monuments, in marble and granite, betoken the favour with which this place of “everlasting rest” is viewed. Most of these monuments are of a simple, unassuming character, and some of them gracefully appropriate.

A wooden fence encircles the cemetery, and a lofty gateway leads into it, of Egyptian fashion, but of the like American material, which, it is to be presumed, will speedily be superseded by suitable erections of the fine dark granite found here in abundance.

This spot, if presided over by anything like taste, must become, in a very few years, one of the places one might reasonably make a pilgrimage to look upon; so lavish has Nature been in its adornment, and so admirably are its accessories fitted to its present purpose.

Boston and its neighbourhood possess, in the eyes of a British subject, a number of sites of singular historical interest.

On Hancock’s Wharf that tea-party was held which cost Britain ten millions of gold, and reft from the empire one quarter of the globe. The lines of the American army at Cambridge are still to be readily traced throughout their whole extent; the forts at the extremities, north and south, are yet perfect in form as when designed by the engineer.

Across the peninsula, to the west of the isthmus, may be traced the British lines and the broad deep fosse which, filled by the tide, insulated the city these were projected to defend: their remains testify to the care and labour bestowed upon their completion.

Bunker’s Hill and the Breeds, where the first determined stand was made against the British army, is commanded from the steeples and many house-tops of the city.

If the defenders of these miserable lines knew that they were observed by their kindred on this day, they took, at least, especial care that the lookers-on should have no cause to blush for their lack of manhood. Under cover of a hastily thrown-up breastwork, of which no trace remains, did those hardy yeomen abide and repulse several assaults of a regular and well-officered force; nor was it until their last charge of ammunition was delivered that they turned from the defences their courage alone had made good. The result proved how few charges of theirs were flung away; these men knew the value of their ammunition, they were excellent shots, and the word was constantly passed amongst them to “take sure aim.”

On Bunker’s Hill a national monument is in progress, which, when completed, will form an obelisk of fine granite, according to the published plan, thirty feet square at the base, two hundred and twenty feet high, and fifteen feet square at the summit. After considerable progress had been made in this most durable memorial, the funds ran out and the work stood still; however, the reproach of its remaining unfinished is now likely to be speedily removed, for during this last year, I believe, the necessary sum has been raised, and the national monument of Massachusetts put en train for completion.

Below this celebrated hill lies one of the most complete and extensive navy-yards in the States. At the period of my visit its dry dock was occupied by a pet ship of the American navy, “the Constitution,” or, as this fine frigate is familiarly called, “Old Ironsides.” She was stripped down to her kelson outside and in, for the purpose of undergoing a repair that will make her, to all intents, a new ship.

She is what would now be called a small frigate, but one of the prettiest models possible as high as the bends; above, she tumbles in a little too much to please the eye. Nor did her gun-deck appear to me particularly roomy for her burthen.

She was logged nearly eleven feet during the whole of the period she was last afloat, yet is said to have sailed faster than anything she met; this defect the builders have now remedied, and expect that, on a straight keel, she will prove the fastest ship afloat.

I also went on board a seventy-four, employed as a receiving ship; “a whapper! of her size,” low between decks, but with a floor like a barn, and the greatest beam I ever saw in a two-decker. Here were also on the stocks a three and a two decker, both to be rated as seventy-fours; the latter a model of beauty.

From the roof of the house covering this ship I enjoyed the finest panoramic view imaginable. Boston, its long bridges, and the great dam connecting the blue hills of the main with the peninsulas of Boston, and that on which the populous village of Charleston stands, all lay beneath the eye on the land side; whilst looking seaward, the inner and outer harbours, together with their numerous islands, stretched away far beyond the ken; and, were these islands only wooded, no harbour in the world would excel this in beauty: at present, though grand, from its great extent it looks bleak and naked, so completely have the islands and the surrounding heights been denuded of wood.

I like this view better than either the one from the dome of the State-house or that from the summit of Mount Auburn: a few glances from this point affords one a good practical notion both of the city and the populous environs, which may be said to form a part of it, besides being in itself a varied and beautiful picture, viewed, as I first saw it, on the afternoon of a calm clear day.

STATE PRISON.

Whilst here, I visited the state-prison, the first I had seen where the Auburn system is pursued; that is, solitary night-cells, silence, and labour in gangs. The building itself is a fine one, having nearly four hundred cells, enclosed within external walls, round which run galleries that command a view of the interior of every cell without disturbing or annoying the confined; the whole covered by a common roof of the strongest kind, lighted and ventilated in the best manner.

The merits of this plan will be fairly set forth long before this trifle meets the public eye, a commission being now in progress throughout these States for the purpose of relieving England from the stigma of having no means of employment in her prisons less brutalizing than the tread-mill.

I here saw about two hundred convicts actively employed at various trades, preparing granite for building, doing smiths’ work, making shoes, brushes, &c.; all very clean, but certainly not looking very healthy.

A single overseer went the rounds of each building or department, and kept the hive in motion, without a word spoken, unless in reference to the task in hand. Whilst passing through the masons’ shed, I noticed two persons make inquiries of the superintendent: their questions were to the point, given in few words, but with an air perfectly free and unrestrained, and were replied to in the like manner.

Upon the value of this system as a preventive of crime, according to my view of human nature, I may be allowed to express a doubt, as well as of its applicability to the condition of Great Britain; but viewing it in the abstract, without such reference, I confess no philanthropic object ever struck me as so completely illustrative of the principles of true benevolence. This was, in fact, returning good for evil, in the most Christian sense of the word; “chastening as a father chasteneth.” It would appear that a convict must be unnaturally hardened not to quit this abode a better man. Let him arrive here, however outcast, vile, ignorant, knowing no honest calling, broken in health and savage in spirit, here he will find teachers, masters, physicians, all provided for him by the community whose laws he has violated. His spirit is soothed, his health is recruited, his ignorance enlightened: he is made master of a sufficient calling; and, when restored to society, is able to contrast the value of the meal earned by the honest sweat of his brow with the bitter fruit of idleness and crime.

Such is the result contemplated by the benevolent promoters of the prison system of this country, which everywhere has societies of voluntary philanthropists who watch over and study to improve it. One is ashamed, after this, to avow a doubt of its success in practice, since it almost amounts to an admission that man is indeed the brute our European legislators appear to think him.

The subject is, at least, one that demands from England a rigid inquiry, when we call to mind what a den of debasement, what a sink of soul and body, a prison yet is amongst the most civilized and humane people in the world.

TREMONT HOTEL.

My last, though not least, lion of Boston is the “Tremont House,” which being, in my opinion, the very best of the best class of large hotels in the Union, I shall select as a specimen.

With externals I have little to do, although the architecture of this fine building might well claim a particular description: its frontage is nearly two hundred feet, with two wings about one hundred each in depth: it is three stories high in front above the basement, and the wings are each of four stories: the number of rooms, its proprietor informed me, amount to two hundred, independent of kitchens, cellars, and other offices: it contains hot and cold baths, and is, in fact, wanting in nothing essential to the character of a well-contrived hotel.

The curious part of the affair, however, to a European, and more especially to an Englishman, is the internal arrangement of such a huge institution, the machinery by which it is so well and so quietly regulated.

Let the reader reflect, that here are two public tables daily, one for men resident in the house, together with many gentlemen of the city, who regularly dine here; the other for ladies, or families who have not private apartments: of the latter there are a dozen, consisting of two or more chambers attached to each parlour; these are seldom unoccupied, and have also to be provided for: add to all this an occasional dinner or supper to large public parties, and he will then be enabled to appreciate the difficulties and do justice to the system which works as I shall presently describe.

At half-past seven A.M. the crash of a gong rattles through the remotest galleries, to rouse the sleepers: this you may hear or not, just as you choose; but sound it does, and loudly. Again, at eight, it proclaims breakfast on the public tables: as I never made my appearance at this meal, I cannot be expected to tell how it may be attended. The lover of a late dejeuner may either order his servant to provide one in his own room, or at any hour, up to noon, direct it to be served in the common hall: it will, in either case, consist of whatever he may desire that is in the house.

At three o’clock, dinner is served in a well-proportioned, well-lighted room, seventy feet long by thirty-one wide, occupied by two parallel tables, perfectly appointed, and provided with every delicacy of the season, well dressed and in great abundance,the French cooking the best in the country,this par parenthèse. Meantime, the attendance is very sufficient for a man not in a “devouring rage,” and the wines of every kind really unexceptionable to any reasonable gourmet.

At this same hour, let it be borne in mind, the same play is playing in what is called the ladies’ dining-room, where they sit surrounded by their husbands, fathers, brothers, or lovers, as may be; and surely having no meaner table-service. As for the possessors of an apartment, these persons order dinner for as many as they please, at what hour they please, and in what style they please, the which is duly provided in their respective parlours.

In the public rooms tea is served at six, and supper at nine o’clock; it being yet a marvel to me, first, how all these elaborate meals are so admirably got up, and next, how the plague these good people find appetite to come to time with a regularity no less surprising.

It was a constant subject of no little amusement to me to observe a few of the knowing hands hanging about, as feeding-time drew near, their ears on the prick and their eyes on the door, which is thrown open at the first bellow of the gong.

As to the indecent pushing and driving, so amusingly described by some travellers, I never saw a symptom of it in any hotel I visited throughout the country: on the contrary, the absence of extraordinary bustle and confusion, where such numbers have to be provided for, is not the least striking part of the affair; and only to be accounted for by supposing that the habit of living thus together, and being in some sort accountable to one another, renders individuals more considerate and courteous than they can afford to be when congregated to feed amongst us.

I confess that, at first, a dinner of a hundred, or a hundred and fifty persons, on a hot day, alarmed me; but, the strangeness got over, I rather liked this mode of living, and, as a stranger in a new country, would certainly prefer it to the solitary mum-chance dinner of a coffee-room.

By eleven o’clock at night the hive is hushed, and the house as quiet as any well-ordered citizen’s proper dwelling. The servants in this establishment were all Irish lads; and a civiller or better-conducted set of boys, as far as the guests were concerned, I never saw, or would desire to be waited on by. The bar was also well conducted, under the care of an obliging and very active person; and the proprietor, Mr. Boydon, or his father, constantly on the spot, both most active in all matters conducive to the ease and comfort of the visitors.

This city abounds in charitable institutions, and nowhere have more princely contributions been made for philanthropic purposes,witness the recent gift of Colonel Perkins of a mansion, valued at thirty thousand dollars, as a permanent asylum for the blind; one of those institutions most interesting in themselves, and which confer dignity and honour upon the age and upon human nature.

The Bostonians are said to be proud of their literary character, and boast a number of societies whose object it is to justify their claim to this honourable distinction. The only one I can speak of from personal observation is the Athenaeum, an excellently-supplied reading-room; having attached to it a library of thirty thousand volumes, a valuable collection of coins and medals, a gallery for the exhibition of pictures, and lecture-rooms well furnished with the necessary apparatus for philosophical and practical illustration.

This institution is provided for by subscription: the principal portion of the mansion it occupies being the free gift of the same open hand which so munificently endowed the asylum for the blind.

The private literary society here is said to be very superior to that of any other city of the States, and by no means small. Of society so called I nothing know, never having had the honour of being admitted of the community, or indeed having made any attempts upon their proper realm beyond an occasional rude foray on the border, uncontinued, and consequently little noted.

Private intercourse is gay and agreeable, and less restrained by the exclusive pretension to dress and fashion which prevails in society both at New York and Philadelphia; whilst, if attractive women are less numerous here than in those cities, beauty is by no means rare; indeed Boston boasts of one family whose personal attractions might serve to sustain the pretensions of a larger population.

THE TREMONT THEATRE.

In the same street, and immediately opposite the great hotel, is the Tremont Theatre, certainly the most elegant exterior in the country, and with a very well-proportioned, but not well-arranged salle, or audience part.

I commenced here on Monday the 30th of September, three days after closing at Philadelphia, to a well-filled house, composed, however, chiefly of men, as on my debut at New York. My welcome was cordial and kind in the extreme; but the audience, although attentive, appeared exceedingly cold. On a first night I did not heed this much, especially as report assured me they were very well pleased; but throughout the week this coldness appeared to me to increase rather than diminish, and so much was I affected by it, that, notwithstanding the houses were very good, I, on the last day of my first engagement of six nights, declined positively to renew it, as was the custom in such cases, and as, in fact, the manager and myself had contemplated: on this night, however, the aspect of affairs brightened up amazingly; the house was crowded; a brilliant show of ladies graced the boxes; the performances were a repetition of two pieces which had been previously acted, and from first to last the mirth was electric; the good people appeared, by common consent, to abandon themselves to the fun of the scene, and laughed a gorge deployee. At the fall of the curtain, after, in obedience to the call of the house, I had made my bow, the manager announced my re-engagement; and from this night forth I never met a merrier or a pleasanter audience.

It was quite in accordance with the character ascribed to the New-Englanders that they should coolly and thoroughly examine and understand the novelty presented for their judgment, and that, being satisfied and pleased, they should no longer set limits to the demonstration of their feelings.

In matters of graver import they have always evinced the like deliberate judgment and apparent coldness of bearing; but beneath this prudential outward veil they have feelings capable of the highest degree of excitement and the most enduring enthusiasm.

I do not agree with those who describe the Yankee as a naturally cold-blooded, selfish being. From both the creed and the sumptuary regulations of the rigid moral censors from whom they sprung, they have inherited the practice of a close self-observance and a strict attention to conventional form, which gives a frigid restraint to their air that nevertheless does not sink far beneath the surface.

A densely-populated and ungrateful soil has kept alive and quickened their natural gifts of intelligence and enterprise, whilst the shifts poverty imposes upon young adventure may possibly at times have impelled prudence to degenerate into cunning. But look at their history as a community; they have been found ever ready to make the most generous sacrifices for the commonwealth. In their domestic relations they are proverbial as the kindest husbands and most indulgent fathers; whilst as friends they are found to be, if reasonably wary, at least steadfast, and to be relied on to the uttermost of their professions.

I can readily understand a stranger, having any share of sensibility, not liking a people whose observances are so peculiar and so decidedly marked; but I do think it impossible for an impartial person to spend any time in the country, or have any close intercourse with the community, without learning to respect and admire them, malgré their calculating prudence, and the many prejudices inseparable from a system of education even to this day sufficiently narrow and sectarian.

As far as my personal experience is worthy of consideration, I must declare that some of the kindest, gentlest, and most hospitable friends I had, and, I trust I may add, have, in the Union, were natives of New-England, or, as they say here, “real Yankee, born and raised within sight of the State-house of Bosting.”