Note 602 — Chapter II · (continued 2)

It was not procured from Paris till four years after the peace (Colonel Humphrey's letter, Nov., 1787, in Amer. Museum, ii. 493). John Adams (Familiar Letters, 210) describes a device proposed for it, as early as 1776. It was purchased for the city of Boston in 1876, and is now preserved in the Boston Public Library. Its history is given in the Boston Evacuation Memorial. It has been described and delineated, obverse and reverse, several times, as in Sparks's Washington, i. 174, iii. 356; in Frothingham's Siege (cover); Mem. Hist. of Boston, iii. 100; Amer. Journal of Numismatics (July, 1880), xv. 1, 38; Snowden's Medals of Washington; Loubat's Medallic Hist. of the United States; Nat. Port. Gallery (N. Y. 1834); Johnston's Orig. portraits of Washington, p. 235; Guizot's Atlas to his Washington. Baker (Medallic Portraits of Washington, p. 27) says the artist made in it the earliest use of Houdon's bust. See Washington's letter in Force's Archives, v. 977. On one side are the words "Hostibus primo fugatis", and Mahon (vi. 85) seizes upon them to show that they plainly renounce all "the idle vaunts of Lexington", that the British had there fled.