nt. The _capital city_, Boston, is a place of
_great wealth and trade_; and by much the largest of any in the English
empire of America; and not exceeded but by few cities, perhaps two or
three, in all the American world."

But if our ancestors at the close of the first century could look back
with joy and even admiration, at the progress of the country, what
emotions must we not feel, when, from the point on which we stand, we
also look back and run along the events of the century which has now
closed! The country which then, as we have seen, was thought deserving
of a "noble name,"--which then had "mightily increased," and become
"very populous,"--what was it, in comparison with what our eyes behold
it? At that period, a very great proportion of its inhabitants lived in
the eastern section of Massachusetts proper, and in Plymouth Colony. In
Connecticut, there were towns along the coast, some of them respectable,
but in the interior all was a wilderness beyond Hartford. On Connecticut
River, settlements had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and Fort Dummer
had been built near where is now the south line of New Hampshire. In New
Hampshire no settlement was then begun thirty miles from the mouth of
Piscataqua River, and in what is now Maine the inhabitants were confined
to the coast. The aggregate of the whole population of New England did
not exceed one hundred and sixty thousand. Its present amount (1820) is
probably one million seven hundred thousand. Instead of being confined
to its former limits, her population has rolled backward, and filled up
the spaces included within her actual local boundaries. Not this only,
but it has overflowed those boundaries, and the waves of emigration have
pressed farther and farther toward the West. The Alleghany has not
checked it; the banks of the Ohio have been covered with it. New England
farms, houses, villages, and churches spread over and adorn the immense
extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie, and stretch along from the Alleghany
onwards, beyond the Miamis, and toward the Falls of St. Anthony. Two
thousand miles westward from the rock where their fathers landed, may
now be found the sons of the Pilgrims, cultivating smiling fields,
rearing towns and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimonial
blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and religion. The world has
seen nothing like this. Regions large enough to be empires, and which,
half a century ago, were known only as re