THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS By LILIAN WHITING KE 4207 US 13175.1411.3 MARVAND OOLLAGE Copyright, 1902, All rights reserved Published December, 1902 HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. ΤΟ CHARLOTTE WHIPPLE (MRS. EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE) WHOSE LIFE HAS BEEN ENSHRINED IN BOSTON'S GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS, THIS RECORD OF ITS BEAUTIFUL DAYS IS INSCRIBED WITH THE DEVOTION OF LILIAN WHITING "The fountains of my hidden life TO THE READER HE aim in this volume is simply to present some transcripts of the remarkable life in Boston during the nineteenth century, the latter years of which came within the personal observation and experience of the writer, and nearly all of which is, or is, or has been until recently, within the memory of people yet living. It is not the design to attempt any history of literature, or specific biographical record, but only to read backward, like the Chaldeans, some of those "delicate omens traced in air," to interpret some of that mystic handwriting on the wall which, traced in the invisible ink of spiritual record by the great and good whose theatre of action was in this city, yet reveals itself as in letters of light, to the vision of sympathy and of reverence. It is the Boston whose "hierarchy was based on education, public service, and the importance of the ministry,"-on culture, philosophic thought, literary art, and the ethics of spirituality, --which is studied in these pages. Boston was planted in prayer, and nurtured by spiritual uplifting. Cotton Mather, an ancestor of the writer of these pages, records |