eas and standards essentially Puritan;
modern liberalism, however, has introduced new standards of social life.
In 1900 35.1% of the inhabitants were foreign-born, and 72.2% wholly or
in part of foreign parentage. Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian,
English and German are the leading races. Of the foreign-born population
these elements constituted respectively 35.6, 24.0, 7.6, 7.0, 6.7 and
5.3%. Large foreign colonies, like adjoining but unmixing nations,
divide among themselves a large part of the city, and give to its life a
cosmopolitan colour of varied speech, opinion, habits, traditions,
social relations and religions. Most remarkable of all, the Roman
Catholic churches, in this stronghold of exiled Puritanism where
Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of
any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the
politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned
against each other on the question of the control of the public schools.
Despite, however, its heavy foreign admixture the old Americanism of the
city remains strikingly predominant. The population of Boston at the end
of each decennial period since 1790 was as follows:--(1790), 18,320;
(1800), 24,937; (1810), 33,787; (1820), 43,298; (1830), 61,392; (1840),
93,383; (1850), 136,881; (1860), 177,840; (1870), 250,526; (1880),
362,839; (1890), 448,477; (1900), 560,892.

_History._--John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was
explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts
to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott
in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay,
within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop's company
reached Charlestown. At that time a "bookish recluse," William Blaxton
(Blackstone), one of the several "old planters" scattered about the bay,
had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location
seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party
chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of
which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three
hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp's and Fort) led to the
adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula,--a name perpetuated
variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the
17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations,
i