There was the Cape sparkling miles and miles across the way, unconcerned that he whose firm foot had rung last on its flints should ring there no more; there was the beautiful town lying large and warm along the river; here gay craft went darting about like gulls, and there up the channel sped a larger one, with all her canvas flashing in the sun, and shivering a little spritsail in the shadow, as she went; and fawning in upon my feet came the foam from the South Breaker, that still perhaps cradled Faith and Gabriel.  But as I looked, my eye fell, and there came the sea-scenes again,—­other scenes than this, coves and corners of other coasts, sky-girt regions of other waters.  The air was soft, that April day, and I thought of the summer calms; and with that rose long sheets of stillness, far out from any strand, purple beneath the noon; fields slipping close in-shore, emerald-backed and scaled with sunshine; long sleepy swells that hid the light in their hollows, and came creaming along the cliffs.  And if upon these broke suddenly a wild glimpse of some storm careering over a merciless mid-ocean, of a dear dead face tossing up on the surge and snatched back again into the depths, of mad wastes rushing to tear themselves to fleece above clear shallows and turbid sand-bars,—­they melted and were lost in peaceful glimmers of the moon on distant flying foam-wreaths, in solemn midnight tides chanting in under hushed heavens, in twilight stretches kissing twilight slopes, in rosy morning waves flocking up the singing shores.  And sitting so, with my lids still fallen, I heard a quick step on the beach, and a voice that said, “Georgie!” And I looked, and a figure, red-shirted, towered beside me, and a face, brown and bearded and tender, bent above me.

Oh! it was Dan!

THE SAM ADAMS REGIMENTS IN THE TOWN OF BOSTON.[A]

[Footnote A:  This monograph, has been prepared almost entirely from original authorities.  Citations will be found in it from letters written by General Gage, Governor Bernard, John Pownall, Lord Barrington, and Lord Hillsborough, which have not been heretofore printed or used.  They are from the rich historical collections of JARED SPARKS,—­who has liberally permitted the writer to use original papers as freely as though they were his own.  Among other sources from which the narrative has been drawn is an unfinished Life of Samuel Adams, in manuscript, by Samuel Adams Wells, for the liberal use of which, and for other papers, the writer is indebted to GEORGE BANCROFT.  The materials have been mostly taken, however, from a compilation which the writer has had for several years in manuscript, entitled, “The Life and Times of Joseph Warren.”]

THE LANDING.

As John Adams, in the evening of his life, and in the retirement of Quincy, looked back on the scenes through which he had passed, he dwelt on the removal of the British troops from Boston in the month of March, 1770, as an event that profoundly stirred the public mind, and thus contributed to promote that radical change in affections and principles on the paramount subject of sovereignty, which he regarded as constituting the real American Revolution.