The colonies under the house of Hanover Author:John Andrew Doyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In the true spirit of mediaeval economy, no person might ' engross' goods in the market with a view to retailing them. The proposal for a market was considere... more »d in a town meeting of over eight hundred, and only carried by twenty-five votes. We may reasonably suppose this opposition was due not to indifference to a scheme so evidently convenient in itself, but to dislike of the restraint on private dealing. The market was to be held in three separate places. This was probably intended to suit the convenience of different parts of the town, and also necessitated by the difficulty of finding any site at once central and spacious enough. The peninsular position of the town had not as yet brought with it any inconvenient compression. In some parts, indeed, houses were crowded together, as they can scarcely fail to be in a seaport town with a stirring business, where certain situations have obvious advantages. But the town was well furnished with lungs. The open common, where in the days of Winthrop and Dudley the town cattle had grazed, was now a lounge for a leisurely class with tastes and habits undreamt of a century earlier.1 Gardens and orchards adjoining the town, and breaking the line of its outer buildings, give an air of space and freedom which Boston retained till late into the nineteenth century2 through years of increasing prosperity. That men, not walls, make a city is specially true of the life of a young community, strenuous, fast-growing 8ocii uie and self-conscious. Of the life of those who oc- of Boton. CUpied the houses of Boston it is not difficult to form a distinct and fairly complete picture. That life was 1 'The gallants a little before sunset walk with their marmalade Madams as we do in Moorfields.' Dnnton, p. 69; cf. Winser's Eotton, vol. i. p. 45...« less