occupied
by the Every Day Church, of the Universalist denomination. The tide of
prosperity kept steadily rising. The throng of worshippers increased,
until, in the very midst of the great Civil War, it was necessary to
have more room. The present grand edifice on Tremont Street was
erected and dedicated February 11, 1864; the Rev. Edwin Bonaparte
Webb, who had been called from Augusta, Maine, being the popular and
successful pastor.

Boston was not then noted, as she certainly is now, for grandeur or
loveliness in church edifices. Neither excellence nor taste in
ecclesiastical architecture was, before the war, a striking trait of
the city or the people. To-day her church spires and towers are not
only numerous, but are famed for their variety and beauty.

Fortunately for the future of Boston, the people of Shawmut Church
found a good architect, who led the van of improvement in church
architecture. The new edifice was the first one in the city on the
early Lombardy style of architecture, and did much to educate the
taste of the people of the newer and the older town, and especially
those in the fraternity of churches called Congregational.

Both its architecture and decoration have been imitated and improved
upon in the city wherein it was a pioneer of beauty and the herald of
a new order of church architecture. It is a noble vehicle of the
faith and feelings of devout worshippers.

The equipment of Shawmut Church edifice made it a very homelike place
of worship, and here, for a generation or more of Carleton's life, a
noble company of Christians worshipped. The Shawmut people were noted
for their enterprise, sociability, generosity, and unity of purpose.
In this "South End" of Boston was reared a large proportion of the
generation which to-day furnishes the brain and social and religious
force of the city and suburbs. In Shawmut Church, gathered, week by
week, hundreds of those who, in the glow of prosperity, held common
ambitions, interests, and hopes. They were proud of their city, their
neighborhood, and their church, yet were ever ready to extend their
well-laden hands in gifts to the needy at home, and to send to those
far off, within our own borders, and in lands beyond sea.

The great fire in Boston, of which Carleton wrote so brilliant a
description, which, beginning November 9, 1872, within a few hours
burned over sixty-five acres and reduced seventy-five millions of
property to smoke and ashes, gave the