HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 207 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. A street-car journey upon the long causeways crossing the wide expanse of Charles River where it spreads out to form the "Back Bay," and passing in front of the new improvements on the filled-in lands of the West End and beyond the adjacent flats, takes the visitor to the academic suburb of Cambridge and the great Boston university. This populous town, so far as it is known to fame, is mainly the college, but at its outskirts upon the banks of Charles River is Boston's most noted burial-place, the romantic Mount Auburn Cemetery. This fine enclosure covers about one hundred and twenty-five acres of hill and vale, with a grand development of tombs and landscape. The tower upon the summit of the mount gives a beautiful outlook over Charles River Valley, the Brighton and Brookline villa districts being opposite, with the distant view closed by the Blue Hills of Milton. Harvard University is in the centre of Cambridge, its grounds covering about twenty-two acres, with adjacent fields for athletic sports. Many buildings of ancient and modern construction fill the college yard, as the dormitories and lecture- and recitation-halls, some of Two hundred them being large and attractive structures. and fifty-three years ago the Massachusetts General Court, as the colonial legislature was styled, voted four hundred pounds for the establishment of a school at Cambridge. Two years afterward, in 1638, John Harvard, who had been a pastor in Charlestown, died and bequeathed this school his library and about eight hundred pounds more. Then the Cambridge school was made a college, and named Harvard by the General Court. Cast in heroic bronze, the youthful patron now sits upon a capacious chair in front of the Memorial Hall in the college yard. This university far antedates its rival, Yale, at New Haven, for its first class was graduated in 1642. In fact, Harvard was founded only ninety years later than the greatest college of the AN EASTERN TOUR. old English Cambridge-Emmanuel. John Harvard and Dunster, who was the first president of Harvard, with several other prominent Boston colonists, had been scholars of Emmanuel, and thus from the older Puritan foundation came the younger, and they brought with it the name of the "University City." The first New England printing. press was set up here, and in the University and Riverside presses of to-day it has been succeeded by two extensive bookmaking establishments. Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow have been members of the faculty, and it has sent out thousands of famous graduates. It is liberally endowed, and has thus been enabled to erect its many magnificent buildings, which are usually named in memory of the benefactors. The Harvard government formerly was a strictly religious organization, most of the graduates becoming clergymen; but recently it has been secularized, so that no denominational religion is insisted upon, and but a few comparatively now enter the Church. There are schools of law, medicine, divinity, and the arts, all the learned professions being provided for, but everything is elective. In the various departments at Harvard during the session there are over fourteen hundred students and about fifty-five professors, with many instructors. Much attention is given outdoor sports and athletic training, the college having the finest gymnasium in this country. The most elaborate building of the university, and the best in Cambridge, is the Memorial Hall, which cost four hundred thousand dollars. It is a splendid structure of brick and Nova Scotia stone, three hundred and ten feet long, having a cloister at one end and a massive tower rising at the other. It was recently built in memory of the Harvard graduates who fell during the war, and in the vestibule which crosses the building like a transept, having a marble floor and a rich vaulted ceiling of ash, and grand windows at either end through which pours a mellowed light, there are tablets set in the arcaded sides bearing the names of THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE. 209 one hundred and thirty-six dead of Harvard. Upon one side of this impressive vestibule is the Sanders Theatre, a half amphitheatre, used for commencements and other public services, and seating thirteen hundred persons. The statue of the venerable Josiah Quincy, once president of Harvard and mayor of Boston, adorns this theatre. Upon the other side of the vestibule is the great hall of the college, one hundred and sixty-four feet long and eighty feet high, with a splendid roof of open timber-work and magnificent windows. This is the refectory of the students, and here centre the most hallowed memories of the university, portraits and busts of the distinguished graduates and benefactors adorning it, and the great western window in the late afternoon, as we viewed it, throwing a flood of rich sunlight over the charming scene. Tables cover the floor when the dinner-hour approaches, and here the students are fed at a cost of about four dollars per week. Such is the noted Boston university, patterned after the original Cambridge, and thus adding much to the English style of most things seen about the great Massachusetts capital. It was here, when Sir Charles Dilke visited them a few years ago, that the people told him that they spoke "the English of Elizabeth," and at the same time congratulated him upon using what they said was "good English for an Englishman." XXIX. THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE. THE northern coast of Massachusetts Bay is a rockribbed region of interspersed crags and sand-beaches, stretching far away from Boston toward the north-east to terminate in the massive granite buttress of Cape Ann. It is largely a region of modern sea-coast villas and of oldtime fishermen, of shoemakers and sailors, and in many portions is passing through the interesting stage of transition development caused by the recent inroads of fashionable life. The attractive formation of Boston harbor I have heretofore mentioned, with its numerous islands and the curiously-shaped peninsulas jutting from the mainland. These seem to be scattered about with an apparent irregularity that is very picturesque, yet more closely examined they manage to arrange themselves in three concentric rings. Of these, the inner circle appears to be made by Castle and Governor's Islands in alignment with the peninsulas of East Boston and South Boston. Another and larger circle is a short distance farther eastward. The Squantum peninsula, of which I have already written, juts out from the southern shore between Dorchester and Quincy Bays, and without much difficulty it might be prolonged through Moon and Long and Deer Islands to another of these curiously-formed peninsulas thrust out from the north shore and making the bluffs of Winthrop and a narrow projecting strip that terminates in the rounded headland known as Point Shirley. This is an attractive seaside resort, and was named in memory of Governor Shirley of the Massachusetts colonial province, who once commanded all the British forces in North America. Deer Island is almost connected with this point, and we are told was so called "because of the deare, who often swim thither from the maine when they are chased by the wolves." It has been many years, however, since deer or wolves (of this kind) have been seen around Boston. There is yet another and outer circle, which may be regarded as the eastern boundary of Boston harbor. On the north shore, in front of Lynn, there stretches out for several miles the curious formation of Nahant, and in line with it southward are the reefs known as the "Graves" and the group of islands whereon is Boston Light. To complete THE SHOEMAKERS OF LYNN. 211 the segment of this outer bounding circle, comes out northward from the south shore Nantasket Beach, acutely bending from the north around to the south-west to make the hook whereon is Hull, and leaving at the extremity of the peninsula Paddock's Island. All these odd formations help in making the Boston surroundings very picturesque. The modest village of Hull nestles under a hill near the extremity of this outer Nantasket peninsula-a construction that seems as if put just where it is by human hands to make a breakwater protecting Boston harbor from the Atlantic storms. The northern projection of this curious formation is Point Allerton, and the narrow Nantasket Beach connecting it with the mainland of the south shore is a ribbon of hard white sand four miles long, upon which the surf perpetually beats. This region is a popular summer resort, Hingham village being on the main land, while stretching farther east along the coast is the noted Jerusalem. Road, lined by the splendid seaside villas of wealthy Bostonians that have their lawns spreading out to the edge of the sea. Hingham is a somewhat antiquated locality that is being modernized into a summer resort. Its pride is in the possession of the "oldest church in Yankeedom," a square house with a steep roof sloping up on all the four sides to a platform at the top, surrounded by a balustrade and surmounted by a little pointed belfry. THE SHOEMAKERS OF LYNN. But we must start from Boston for the north shore. Crossing over a ferry to East Boston in the early morning, we are met by the crowds pouring into the city to their daily labor. As the boat moves along, the harbor passes in review, with its grain-elevators and the extensive wharves of the European steamship lines, its tugs, steamers, and ferry-boats. The Bunker Hill Monument is elevated high behind the huge ship-houses of the Charlestown Navy-yard, seen off to the north-west up Charles |