LETTER VIII
Boston—Its Resemblance to Edinburgh—Concord, Walden Pond, and Sleepy Hollow—Is the "Yankee" Dying Out?—America for the Americans—Detroit and Buffalo—The "Middle West."
The luxury of my quarters in Boston seduced me into a disquisition on American hospitality which would have come in equally well with reference to any other city. Were I to search very deeply into my soul (an exercise much in vogue in Boston), I might perhaps find reasons for my rambling off. To say that Boston did not interest me would be the reverse of the truth. It interested me deeply; but it did not excite me with a sense of novelty or vastness. One can only repeat the obvious truth that it is like an exceptionally dignified and stately English town. One instinctively looks around for a cathedral, and finds the State House in its stead. To the founders of this city, the glory of God was not a thing to be furthered, or even typified, by any work of men's hands; but the salvation of men's souls, they thought, could be best achieved in a well-ordered democratic polity. Their descendants
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