life in the strictest sense. But
provincialism is relative, and where it has a flavor of its own, as in
Scotland, it is often agreeable in proportion to its very intensity. The
Massachusetts in which Mr. Quincy's habits of thought were acquired was
a very different Massachusetts from that in which we of later
generations have been bred. Till after he had passed middle life, Boston
was more truly a capital than any other city in America, before or
since, except possibly Charleston. The acknowledged head of New England,
with a population of wellnigh purely English descent, mostly derived
from the earlier emigration, with ancestral traditions and inspiring
memories of its own, it had made its name familiar in both worlds, and
was both historically and politically more important than at any later
period. The Revolution had not interrupted, but rather given a freer
current to the tendencies of its past. Both by its history and position,
the town had what the French call a solidarity, an almost personal
consciousness, rare anywhere, rare especially in America, and more than
ever since our enormous importation of fellow-citizens to whom America
means merely shop, or meat three times a day. Boston has been called the
"American Athens." AEsthetically, the comparison is ludicrous, but
politically it was more reasonable. Its population was homogeneous, and
there were leading families; while the form of government by
town-meeting, and the facility of social and civic intercourse, gave
great influence to popular personal qualities and opportunity to new
men. A wide commerce, while it had insensibly softened the asperities of
Puritanism and imported enough foreign refinement to humanize not enough
foreign luxury to corrupt, had not essentially qualified the native tone
of the town. Retired sea-captains (true brothers of Chaucer's Shipman),
whose exploits had kindled the imagination of Burke, added a not
unpleasant savor of salt to society. They belonged to the old school of
Gilbert, Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, parcel-soldiers all of them, who
had commanded armed ships and had tales to tell of gallant fights with
privateers or pirates, truest representatives of those Vikings who, if
trade in lumber or peltry was dull, would make themselves Dukes of
Dublin or Earls of Orkney. If trade pinches the mind, commerce
liberalizes it; and Boston was also advantaged with the neighborhood of
the country's oldest College, which maintained the w