Page:A new England boyhood by Hale, Edward Everett.djvu/23

Rh pel of the divinity of man. Dr. Tuckerman, Frederick Gray, Charles Barnard and Robert Cassie Waterston, with others, were introducing practical illustrations of improvement. There was plenty of money, and the rich men of Boston really meant that here should be a model and ideal city. The country was prosperous; they were prosperous, and they looked forward to a noble future.

At the same time they had the advantage of having a university close under their lee, which they were themselves managing. They had started their Athenaeum, with the collections of pictures. and statues, and a good library. They had a good deal of leisure ; and a certain interest, not wholly the interest of dilettanti, in fine arts and literature, gave distinction to the little town.

Into such a community it was my good for tune to be born, on the morning of the 3d of April, 1822.

I do not attempt anything so ambitious as an autobiography. But a man sees with his own eyes, and a boy even more than a man; and what I remember of a New England boy-