with pigmy
people creeping about its narrow streets. We were three hundred feet
aloft, and the pinnacle on which we stood is a landmark forty miles at
sea.

Content, and weary of our elevation, we descended the corkscrew stairs and
left the church; the last object that we noticed in the interior being a
bird, which appeared to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful
notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church-steps, we observed
that there were formerly two statues, one on each side of the door-way;
the canopies still remaining, and the pedestals being about a yard from
the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are probably
responsible for the disappearance of these stone saints. This door-way at
the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but must once have been
very rich and of a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch through a great
square tablet of stone, reared against the front of the tower. On most of
the projections, whether on the tower or about the body of the church,
there are gargoyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness,--fiends, beasts,
angels, and combinations of all three; and where portions of the edifice
are restored, the modern sculptors have tried to imitate these wild
fantasies, but with very poor success. Extravagance and absurdity have
still their law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the primmest
things on earth.

In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed the river by a bridge, and
observed that the larger part of the town seems to lie on that side of its
navigable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of
Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the North End of our
American Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my boyish days.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections
of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical
character of the streets and houses in the New-England metropolis; at any
rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old
peaked and projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It
is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this
hereditary connection and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the
old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, after chill
years of banishment, to leave this hospitable place, on that account.
Moreover, it recalled some of the feature