New England Diary

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Boston too ‘refined’?

Boston Latin {High} School was established in 1635 and is the oldest public school in the U.S.

“For no matter how they might want to ignore it, there was an air of excellence about this city (Boston), an air of reason, a feeling for beauty, a memory of something very good, and perhaps a reminiscence of the vast aspiration of man which could never entirely vanish.’’

— Arona McHugh (1924-1996), American novelist who set two of her novels in her native Boston

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“The society of Boston was and is quite uncivilized but refined beyond the point of civilization.’’

— T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Nobel Prize-winning Anglo-American poet, critic, essayist and playwright who came from an old Boston Brahmin family.