Mr. Craigie gave £3,750 lawful money, a sum so small in comparison with its value that our reader will pardon us for mentioning it. Craigie was at Bunker Hill, and assisted in the care of the wounded there. He was at Cambridge during the siege of Boston, and doubtless dispensed his nostrums liberally, for physic was the only thing of which the army had enough, if we may credit concurrent testimony. He was with the Northern army, under General Gates, in 1777 and 1778, and was the confidant of Wilkinson, Gates's adjutant-general, in his correspondence with Lord Stirling, growing out of the Conway imbroglio. Craigie was a director and large proprietor in the company which built the bridge connecting East Cambridge with Boston, to which his name was given. After his decease his widow continued to reside here. Craigie entertained two very notable guests in this house. One of them was Talleyrand, the evil genius of Napoleon, who said of him that he always treated his enemies as if they were one day to become his friends, and his friends as if they were one day to become his enemies. "A man of talent, but venal in everything." The world has long expected the private memoirs of this remarkable personage, but the thirty years which the prince stipulated in his will should first elapse proved too short for his executors. Without doubt, the private correspondence of Talleyrand would make a record of the most. startling character, and give an insight into the lives of his contemporaries that might reverse the views of the world in general in regard to some of them. Few dared to fence with the caustic minister. Have you read my book?" said Madame de Staël to the prince, whom she had there made to play a part as well as herself. "No," replied Talleyrand; "but I understand we both figure in it as women. In December, 1794, the Duke of Kent, or Prince Edward as he was styled, was in Boston, and was received during his sojourn with marked attention. He was then in command of the forces in Canada, but afterwards joined the expedition, under Sir Charles Grey, to the French West Indies, where he so greatly distinguished himself by his reckless bravery at the storming of Martinique and Guadaloupe that the flank division. which he commanded became the standing toast at the admiral's and commander-in-chief's table. The Duke was a perfect martinet, and was so unpopular with the regiment he commanded under O'Hara, at Gibraltar, that it repeatedly mutinied. He was the father of Queen Victoria. He was The prince was accompanied to Boston by his suite. very devoted to the ladies, especially so to Mrs. Thomas Russell, whom he attended to the Assembly at Concert Hall. He danced four country-dances with his fair companion, but she fainted before finishing the last, and he danced with no one else, at which every one of the other eighty ladies present was much enraged. At the British Consul's, where the prince held a levee, he was introduced to the widow of a British officer. Her he saluted, while he only bowed to the other ladies present, which gave rise to feelings of no pleasant nature in gentle. breasts. It was well said by one who knew the circumstance, that had his Highness settled a pension on the young widow and her children it would indeed have been a princely salute. The prince visited Andrew Craigie. He drove a handsome pair of bays with clipped ears, then an unusual sight in the vicinity of Old Boston. In October, 1832, Mr. Sparks married Miss Frances Anne Allen, of New York, and in April, 1833, he began housekeeping in the Craigie house. He was at this time engaged on his "Writings of George Washington," and notes in his journal under the date of April 2: "This day, began to occupy Mrs. Craigie's house in Cambridge. It is a singular circumstance that, while I am engaged in preparing for the press the letters of General Washington which he wrote at Cambridge after taking command of the American army, I should occupy the same rooms that he did at that time."* Edward Everett, whose efforts in behalf of the Mount Vernon fund associate his name with our memorials of Washington, *Rev. Dr. Ellis's Memoir. resided here just after his marriage, and while still a professor in the University of which he became president. Willard, Phillips, and Joseph Emerson Worcester, the lexicographer, also lived in the house we are describing. We now return to Mr. Longfellow, who became an inmate of the house in 1837, with Mrs. Craigie for his landlady. The Harvard professor, as he then was, took possession of the southeast chamber, which has been mentioned as Washington's. this room were written "Hyperion" and "Voices of the Night," and to its inspiration perhaps we owe the lines, "Lives of great men all remind us We may make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time." In Nearly all of Longfellow's productions, except "Coplas de Manrique" and "Outre Mer," which were written at Brunswick, have been penned in the old Vassall homestead. It is related that one day, after patiently exhibiting his grand old mansion to a knot of visitors, to whose many questions he replied with perfect good-humor, the poet was about to close the door on the party, when the leader and spokesman accosted him with the startling question, "Can you tell me who lives in this house now?" "Yes, sir, certainly. I live here." "What name?" "Longfellow." Any relation to the Wiscasset Longfellers?" This house will ever be chiefly renowned for its associations with the Father of his Country, and when it is gone the spot will still be cherished in loving remembrance. Yet some pilgrims there will be who will come to pay tribute to the literary memories that cluster around it; soldiers who conquer with the pen's point, and on whose banners are inscribed the watchword, "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war." CHAPTER XIV. OLD TORY ROW AND BEYOND. "Damned neuters, in their middle way of steering, DRYDEN. HE house standing at the corner of Brattle and Sparks Streets, almost concealed from view by a group of giant, sweet-scented Lindens, has replaced the one formerly occupying that site, now removed farther up the street. The old, two-storied house, seen in our view, has been bodily raised from its foundations, on the shoulders of a more youthful progeny, as if it were anxious to keep pace with the growth of the trees in its front, and still overlook its old landscape. Of about the same length of years as its neighbor which we have but now left, this house was in ante-Revolutionary times first the abode of Richard Lechmere, and later of Jonathan Sewall, royalists both. To the former, a Boston distiller, we have already alluded; but the latter may well claim a passing notice. He belonged to one of the old distinguished families of Massachusetts, and was himself a man of very superior abilities. He was the intimate friend and associate of John Adams, and endeavored to dissuade him from embarking in the cause of his country. To Sewall, Adams addressed the memorable words, as they walked on the Great Hill at Portland, "The die is now cast; I have now passed the Rubicon: swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish, with my country is my unalterable determination." "Jonathan and John” again met in London, the former a broken-down, disappointed man ; the latter ambassador of his country at the very court upon whose niggardly bounty the loyalist had depended. Sewall came to Nova Scotia, where he had been appointed Judge of Admiralty. He married Esther, the sister of Dorothy Quincy, wife of Governor Hancock. Sewall's house was mobbed in September, 1774, and he was forced to flee into Boston. Old MacFingal asks,— "Who made that wit of water gruel A judge of Admiralty, Sewall?" Sewall's house was at length assigned to General Riedesel as his quarters. His accomplished lady has left a souvenir of her sojourn, in her autograph, cut with a diamond on the pane of a west window, though we ought, perhaps, to say that the signature is considered as the General's by his biographer. Unfortunately, in removing the glass from the sash the pane was broken, an accident much regretted by Mr. Brewster, the present owner of the premises. Here the Germans enjoyed a repose after the vicissitudes they had undergone, and in which we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the fortitude and devotion of the Baroness. The beautiful lindens were a souvenir of the dear Rhineland, not unworthy, indeed, to adorn even the celebrated promenade of Berlin. The Baroness frankly admits that she never was in so delightful a place, but the feeling that they were prisoners made her agreeable surroundings still echo the words of old Richard Lovelace : "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." |