bridge, amongst his old friends and fellow-students; but I could not help feeling that there was a long hereafter before him, when the war is over, and the excitement has passed away; and when I, for my part, would sooner have both legs than have been a hero and be a cripple.

Then, when the orations were over, we strolled through the old college rooms, where the students had prepared luncheons for their friends, and where every stranger, who came, was welcomed with that frank cordiality which seems to me so universal a characteristic of American hospitality. Then, having eaten as much ice-cream and raised pies and lobster salads as our digestions would permit of, we wandered off through the pleasant college grounds; and, in defiance of academical decorum, in full view of the public road, smoked cigars upon the lawn of a college Professor, who invited us to the act by his own example. me say, that of all academical dignitaries whom I have known-and I have known a good number-I should say that the Professors of Harvard College were, as a body, the pleasantest. They are all men of scholarly education, some of them of European repute, and yet, in one sense, they are also men of the world. There is nothing amongst them of that pedantry and that exaggerated notion of their own importance which is almost an invariable characteristic of our own University dons. Living near a great city, almost

Let

all of them married men, with moderate incomes, they form a sort of family of scholars, such as I never met elsewhere.

Later in the afternoon there was dancing for the students and their friends in the College Hall, on whose walls there hung quaint pictures of oldfashioned Puritan benefactors, and in whose midst was suspended the famous six-oar outrigger boat of Harvard College, which beat the Hale boat a year ago, doing the distance in the shortest time ever known across the Atlantic. At any rate I was told so, and believe it accordingly. The dancing seemed to me very good, but the hall was overpoweringly hot, and for my part I preferred the open green, where there was music also, and where all the world was allowed to dance. The scene was in itself a curious instance of American freedom, and also of American good behaviour. The green is open to the high-road, and the whole of the Cambridge world, or of the Boston world for that matter, might have come and danced there. Probably everybody who cared to dance did come, but the dancers were as well-behaved, as quiet, and as orderly as they would have been in a London ball-room. I could not help asking myself, without a satisfactory reply, whether such a scene would be possible at the backs of the Cambridge Colleges, or in the Christchurch meadows; and whether, if it were possible, our young university students would dance as freely in the midst

of any of the Oxford or Cambridge townspeople, who chose to come there accompanied by their sweethearts and sisters. The dancing was followed by a sort of farewell romp of the departing students round an old oak-tree, wherein the chief amusement seemed to consist in the destruction of each others' hats. Then in the evening there was a reception of the students and their friends at the President's house, and an exhibition of Chinese lanterns and rockets on the college green; where, judging from the look of the groups I met strolling about in the dim evening light, I should say that many flirtations of the day must have been ratified by declarations and vows of eternal fidelity. Chi lo sa? And after the guests, and relations, and ladies had gone home, I rather suspect the students made a night of it, over the débris of the cold collations. This, however, is mere suspicion. They may have gone to bed when I did, or have quenched their thirst with the lemonade they provided for the ladies, but I own I doubt it.

VOL. II.

CONCORD.

see a good deal Let me say some

I HAPPENED, while in Boston, to of the literary society of the place. thing of the men whose writings I, in common with most Englishmen, had learnt to know long ago; and whose faces then, for the first time, became as familiar to me as their names.

I am afraid that to most English readers the name of Concord will recall no national reverses. We have a remarkable talent as a nation for forgetting what is unpleasant to remember, but still the fact remains that at Concord a British regiment did run away before a rabble of American volunteers. Our loss consisted of two men killed, whose names have been long forgotten. This was the first armed resistance raised by the Colonists against the imperial troops, and a little obelisk has been erected beside the nameless graves of these two British privates to record the first blow struck in behalf of American independence. A low stunted avenue leads from the Boston high-road

to the bank of the Concord River.

the British troops advanced and

Along this avenue retreated, and on

the bank of the river stands a squat dumpy obelisk Close to the avenue is the Old

of the Georgian era.

Manse, from which Hawthorne culled the mosses. Sitting one summer day by the side of that lazy stream, the author of "The Scarlet Letter" told me a story of the battle which was new to me. When the galling fire of the enemy from the opposite bank caused our troops to retire, the two British soldiers who fell at Concord were not both killed. One of them was only wounded, but in the hurry of the retreat was left for dead on the field. As the British troops withdrew, a farming lad, employed at the Old Manse, came out to look at the scene of the battle. He had an axe with him, and, holding it in his hand, he stole alongside the wounded soldiers, whom he believed to be dead. Just as he got near, the one who was still alive raised himself upon his hands and knees, and began to look about him. The boy in an agony of fear fancied that the man was going to fire, and, striking at him with the axe, cut open his skull, and then fled in terror. Shortly afterwards, some British soldiers, returning to carry off the wounded, found their comrade with his head split in two, and raised the cry that the Americans scalped the dead. The cry spread through the regiment and created a panic, under whose influence the soldiers took to their heels and fled. The boy grew to be a very old