and a few striking essays.  Mr. Bancroft has held numerous high political offices.  In 1838 he was appointed collector of the port at Boston; in 1845 he was made secretary of the Navy; in 1849 he was sent as United States Minister to Great Britain; and in 1867 he was sent in the same capacity to Prussia.  The work which has given Mr. Bancroft his great literary reputation is his “History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.”  The first volume appeared in 1834.  Philosophical in reasoning, interesting, terse in style, and founded on careful research, under the most favorable advantages, the work stands alone in its sphere.

1.  The evening of the fifth came on.  The young moon was shining brightly in a cloudless winter sky, and its light was increased by a new-fallen snow.  Parties of soldiers were driving about the streets, making a parade of valor, challenging resistance, and striking the inhabitants indiscriminately with sticks or sheathed cutlasses.

2.  A band, which poured out from Murray’s barracks, in Brattle Street, armed with clubs, cutlasses, and bayonets, provoked resistance, and a fray ensued.  Ensign Maul, at the gate of the barrack yard, cried to the soldiers:  “Turn out, and I will stand by you; kill them; stick them; knock them down; run your bayonets through them.”  One soldier after another leveled a firelock, and threatened to “make a lane” through the crowd.

3.  Just before nine, as an officer crossed King Street, now State Street, a barber’s lad cried after him:  “There goes a mean fellow who hath not paid my father for dressing his hair;” on which, the sentinel stationed at the westerly end of the customhouse, on the corner of King Street and Exchange Lane, left his post, and with his musket gave the boy a stroke on the head, that made him stagger and cry for pain.

4.  The street soon became clear, and nobody troubled the sentry, when a party of soldiers issued violently from the main guard, their arms glittering in the moonlight, and passed on, hallooing:  “Where are they? where are they?  Let them come.”

5.  Presently twelve or fifteen more, uttering the same cries, rushed from the south into King Street, and so by the way of Cornhill towards Murray’s barracks.  “Pray, soldiers, spare my life,” cried a boy of twelve, whom they met.  “No, no, I’ll kill you all,” answered one of them, and knocked him down with his cutlass.  They abused and insulted several persons at their doors and others in the street; “running about like madmen in a fury,” crying, “Fire!” which seemed their watchword, and, “Where are they?  Knock them down.”  Their outrageous behavior occasioned the ringing of the bell at the head of King Street.

6.  The citizens, whom the alarm set in motion, came out with canes and clubs; and, partly by the interference of well-disposed officers, partly by the courage of Crispus Attucks, a mulatto, and some others, the fray at the barracks was soon over.  Of the citizens, the prudent shouted, “Home! home!” others, it is said, cried out, “Huzza for the main guard! there is the nest;” but the main guard was not molested the whole evening.