in height, first occupied by another of the Tory gentry, Sir Francis
Barnard, the royal governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1769, -- the
period of our greatest historic interest. The beautiful sloping lawn,
shaded with lofty English elms, gave a charming setting to the house,
while broad acres highly cultivated, filled with choice fruit trees,
plants, and shrubs, including orange, lemon, fig, cork, and cinnamon
trees, and other rare exotics, added grandeur and beauty to the
landscape. One can easily call back the old-time scenes within this
mansion, of stately official pomp, of social gayety, of dinners and
balls, where the brocade and stain and lace, in towering head-gear, and
ample panniers; and where the cavaliers rivaled the ladies in their
powered wigs, gorgeous velvet coats and stain waistcoats, ruffled
shirt-fronts, small breeches and silken hose. We catch a glimpse of them
as they troop through the broad hall (fifty-four feet long and twenty
feet wide), and the wainscoted tapestried rooms, on the stately minuet or
the livelier contra-dances, and possibly recognize the forms and faces of
Adams, Hancock, Otis, Warren, and Quincy. Governor Barnard was an
Englishman, a graduate of Oxford, a man of erudition and large wealth. He
had remarkable conversational powers, and so tenacious a memory that he
boasted he could repeat all of Shakespeare's plays. He was a zealous
advocate of the claims of the Crown, and through professing to sympathize
with the men associated with him in their resistance to unjust taxation,
and other coercive measures to the royal government, he secretly worked
against them, and used his influence to have the British regiments sent
to Boston, and thus initiated the war. After holding his high office for
nearly ten years, he was recalled to England, in response to a petition
from the House of Representatives that "he might be forever removed from
the Government of the Province." As he departed from Boston the bells
were rung, cannon fired from the wharves, and the Liberty Tree hung gaily
with flags; so great was to joy of the people to be rid of him. Lady