people of the "Old Thirteen" first acted together as one nation, and here the separate streams of their existence united in one mighty flood. The girdle is not the less interesting that it rests on the ramparts of the Revolution. It is in a great measure true that what is nearest to us we know the least about, and that we ignorantly pass over scenes every day, not a whit less interesting than those by which we are attracted to countries beyond the seas. An invitation to a pilgrimage among the familiar objects which may be viewed from the city steeples, while it may not be comparable to a tour in the environs of London or of Paris, will not, our word for it, fail to supply us with materials for reflection and entertainment. Let us beguile the way with glances at the interior homelife of our English ancestors, while inspecting the memorials they have left behind. Their habitations yet stand by the wayside, and if dumb to others, will not altogether refuse their secrets to such as seek them in the light of historic truth. We shall not fill these old halls with lamentations for a greatness that is departed never to return, but remember always that there is a living present into which our lives are framed, and by which the civilization of what we may call the old régime may be tested. Where we have advanced, we need not fear the ordeal; where we have not advanced, we need not fear to avow it. We suppose ourselves at the water-side, a wayfarer by the old bridge leading to Charlestown, with the tide rippling against the wooden piers beneath our feet, and the blue sky above calling us afield. The shores are bristling with masts which gleam like so many polished conductors and cast their long wavy shadows aslant the watery mirror. Behind these, houses rise, tier over tier, mass against mass, from which, as if disdainful of such company, the granite obelisk springs out, and higher yet, a landmark on the sea, a Pharos of liberty on the shore. The Charles, to which Longfellow has dedicated some charming lines, though not actually seen by Smith, retained the name with which he christened it. It was a shrewd guess in the bold navigator, that the numerous islands he saw in the bay indicated the estuary of a great river penetrating the interior. It is a curious feature of the map which Smith made of the coast of New England in 1614, that the names of Plymouth, Boston, Cambridge, and many other towns not settled until long afterwards, should be there laid down. Smith's map was the first on which the name of New England appeared. In the pavement of St. Sepulchre, London, is Smith's tomb stone. The inscription, except the three Turk's heads, is totally effaced, but the church authorities have promised to have it renewed as given by Stow. The subject of bridging the river from the old ferry-way at Hudson's Point to the opposite shore which is here of about the same breadth as the Thames at London Bridge was agitated as early as 1712, or more than seventy years before its final accomplishment. In 1720 the attempt was renewed, but. while the utility of a bridge was conceded, it was not considered a practicable undertaking. After the Revolution the CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH. project was again revived, and a man was found equal to the occasion. An ingenious shipwright, named Lemuel Cox, was then living at Medford, who insisted that the enterprise was feasible. Some alleged that the channel of the river was too deep, that the ice would destroy the structure, and that it would obstruct navigation; while by far the greater number rejected the idea altogether as chimerical. But Cox persevered. He brought the influential and enterprising to his views; a charter was obtained, and this energetic and skilful mechanic saw the bridge he had so dexterously planned in his brain become a reality. Captain John Stone, of Concord, Mass., was the architect of this bridge. His epitaph in the old buryingground there says he was a man of good natural abilities, which seemed to be adorned with modern virtues and Christian graces. He died in 1791. The opening of the structure upon the anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill, and only eleven years after that event, attracted upwards of twenty thousand spectators. The day was ushered in by a discharge of thirteen cannon from the opposite heights of Breed's Hill, Charlestown, and Copp's Hill, Boston, accompanied by repeated peals from the bells of Christ. Church. At one o'clock, P. M., the proprietors assembled in the State House for the purpose of conducting the several branches of the Legislature over the bridge. The procession, which included not only the public officials, but almost every individual of prominence in the community, moved from State Street, amid a salute from the Castle, and upon its arrival at the bridge the attendant companies of artillery formed two lines to the right and left, through which the cortege passed on to the middle of the bridge, where it halted. The President of the Corporation, Thomas Russell, then advanced alone, and directed Mr. Cox to fix the draw for the passage of the company, which was immediately done. The procession continued its march to Breed's Hill, where two tables, each three hundred and twenty feet long, had been laid, at which eight hundred guests sat down and prolonged the festivities until evening. When built, this was the longest bridge in the world, and, except the abutments, was entirely of wood. Until West Boston Bridge was constructed, in 1793, it yielded a splendid return to the proprietors; but the latter surpassed it not only in length, but in beauty of architecture, and, with the causeway on the Cambridge side, formed a beautiful drive or prom enade of about two miles in extent. It also lessened the dis tance from Cambridge to Boston more than a mile. In 1828 Warren Bridge was opened, but not without serious opposition from the proprietors of the old avenue; and the two bridges might not inaptly have served some native poet for a colloquy as famous as that of the rival "Brigs of Ayr." "Nae langer thrifty citizens an' douce Meet owre a pint, or in the Council-house; Men three-parts made by Tailors and by Barbers, Wha' waste your well hain'd gear on d-d new Brigs and Harbours!" The ferry, which was the original mode of transit between the two peninsulas, was established in 1635, and five years later was granted to Harvard College. To compensate for the loss of the income from this source when Charles River Bridge was built, the proprietors were required to pay £200 per annum to the University, and in 1792 the same sum was imposed on the West Boston Bridge Corporation. Two handbills, each embellished with a rude woodcut of the bridge, were printed on the occasion of the opening, in 1786. One was from the "Charlestown Press"; the other was printed by "E. Russell, Boston, next door to Dr. Haskins', near Liberty Pole." From the broadside (as it was then called), published at the request and for the benefit of the directors and friends of this "grand and almost unparalleled undertaking," we present the following extract: "This elegant work was begun on the First of June 1785, (a day remarkable in the Annals of America as the Ports of Boston and Charlestown were unjustly shut up by an arbitrary British Administration) and was finished on the seventeenth of the same month 1786, the ever memorable day on which was fought the famous and bloody Battle of Bunker-Hill, where was shewn the Valour of the undisciplined NEW ENGLAND MILITIA under the magnanimous Warren who gloriously fell in his COUNTRY'S CAUSE! Blessed Be His Memory !! And All the People Say Amen ! ! ! "1 1 A new steel structure is now replacing the old. The building committee were Hon. Nathaniel Gorham, Richard Devens, David Wood, Jr., Captain Joseph Cordis, Andrew Symmes, Jr., and John Larkin. Lemuel Cox, the artisan, was born in Boston in 1736, and died in Charlestown in 1806. In 1787 he built the bridge to Malden, which was finished in six months; and in the following year (1788), the Essex Bridge, at Salem, was constructed by him. In 1789 he was living in Prince Street, in Boston, and styled himself a millwright. In 1790, accompanied by a Mr. Thompson, Cox went to Ireland, where he was invited to estimate for the building of a bridge over the Foyle at Londonderry. His proposals being accepted, the two Americans purchased a ship, which they loaded at Sheepscot, Maine, with lumber, and having secured about twenty of their countrymen, skilled in shaping timber, set sail for Ireland. The bridge, which connected the city and county, consisted of fifty-eight arches, all of American oak, and was completed in five months. The Foyle was here about nine hundred feet wide and forty feet deep at high water. What made Cox's achievement the more important was the fact that Milne, an English engineer, had surveyed the river and pronounced the scheme impracticable. Our pioneer in bridge-building on a great scale in America has received but scanty recompense at the hands of biographers. Dr. Ure has neither noticed his great works in Ireland nor in this country. Before he left Europe, Mr. Cox was applied to by the Corporation of London to take down Wren's monument, which was supposed to threaten a fall; but, as they would not give him his price, he declined. Massachusetts granted him, in 1796, a thousand acres of land in Maine, for being the first inventor of a machine to cut card-wire, the first projector of a powder-mill in the State, and the first to suggest the employment of prisoners on Castle Island to make nails. The rude woodcut which adorned the head of the broadside circulated at the opening of Charles River Bridge was executed, as the printer says, by "that masterpiece of ingenuity, Mr. Lemuel Cox." It shows a detachment of artillery with cannon ready |