ul pieces of ecclesiastical architecture. But the old Old
South Meeting-House, the ecclesiastical centre of the city, is the flat
and somewhat sour negation of all that is expressed or implied in an
English cathedral. Let me not be understood to disparage the Old South
or the spirit which fashioned it. In my eyes, minster and meeting-house
are equally interesting historic monuments, and to my hereditary
instincts the latter is the more sympathetic. I merely note the fact
that the most conspicuous edifice in Boston, its Duomo, its St. Peter's
or St. Paul's, is dedicated, not to the glory of God, but to the
well-being of man.

Not physically, of course, but intellectually, Boston has been likened
to Edinburgh. The parallel is fair enough, with this important
reservation, that the theological element in the atmosphere is not
Presbyterian but Unitarian. The Boston of to-day, it must be added,
especially resembles Edinburgh in the fact that its pre-eminence as an
intellectual centre has virtually departed. The _Atlantic Monthly_
survives, as _Blackwood_, survives, a relic of the great days of old;
but Boston has no Scott Monument to bear visual testimony to her
spiritual achievement. She ought certainly to treat herself to a worthy
Emerson Monument on the Common, whither the boy Emerson used to drive
his mother's cows: not, of course, a Gothic pile like that which
commemorates the genius of Scott, but a statue by the incomparable St.
Gaudens, under a modest classic canopy.

But if, or when, such a monument is erected, it will absolve no one of
the duty of making a pilgrimage to Concord. Even if it had no historic
or literary associations, this simple, dignified, beautiful New England
village, with its plain frame houses and its stately elm avenues, would
be well worth a visit. Village I call it, but township would be a better
word. Let no one go there with less than half a day to spare, for the
places of interest are widely scattered. My companion and I went first
to Walden Pond, then to the Emerson and Hawthorne houses, then to that
ideal burying-place, Sleepy Hollow, where Emerson and Hawthorne and
Thoreau rest side by side, and finally to the bridge--

Where once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Everything here is beautifully appropriate. The commemorative statue of
the "minute-man" with his musket is simple and expressive, and the four
lines of Emerson's hymn graven on the p