f Massachusetts, and, entering the arched passage
which penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few
steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small
and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the
square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted
by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with
his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the
weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this
attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a
cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's
watch over the city.

The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to
have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron
ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
that beneath. These letters and figures--"16 P.S. 79"--are wrought
into the ironwork of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
edifice, with the initials of its founder's name.

A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on
the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this
apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees
with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors,
the judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of
the province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present
condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never
visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches
which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with
Dutch tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture,
and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat
beside this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue
tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles,
cigar-boxes and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump
and a s