nity of
soul worthy the human mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits
the applause of all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in
the bright records of Panic to the latest ages, and unborn millions will
rise up and call them blessed."

This eulogy on Boston is a great fact of these times, and therefore
ought to have a place in a history of them. It was not of a local cast,
for it appears in several Colonies and in England; it was not a
manufacture of politicians, for it is seen in the private letters of the
friends of constitutional liberty which have come to light subsequently
to the events; it was not a transient enthusiasm, for the same strain
was continued during the years preceding the war. The praise was
bestowed on a town small in territory and comparatively small in
population. Such were the cities of Greece in the era of their renown.
"The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies," remarks Gibbon,
"do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the
trophies of Salamis or Plataea, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic
size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious
Greeks." No trophies had been gathered in an American Plataea; there had
been no great civic triumph; there was no hero upon whom public
affection centred; nor was there here a field on which to weave a web of
court-intrigue, or to play a game of criminal ambition;--there was,
indeed, little that common constructors of history would consider to be
history. Yet it was now written, and made common thought by an
unfettered press,--"Nobler days nor deeds were never seen than at this
time."[2] This was an instinctive appreciation of a great truth; for
the real American Revolution was going on in the tidal flow of thought
and feeling, and in the formation of public opinion. A people inspired
by visions of better days for humanity, luxuriating in the emotions of
hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which
it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national
stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour. And
their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on
national principles and for a national cause. Because of this did they
predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy
to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.

As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a