all things American. “The ladies . . . filled my pockets with bon-bons, and . . . called me ‘le pétit Bostonien.’ It was indeed by the name of Bostonian that all Americans were known in France then. The war having broken out in Boston and the first great battle fought in its neighbourhood, gave to that name universal celebrity. A game invented at that time, played with cards, was called ‘Boston,’ and is to this day (1830) exceedingly fashionable at Paris by that appellation” (Recollections of Samuel Breck, Philadelphia, 1877). There was a tradition that Dr Franklin was fond of the game and even that he had a hand in its invention. At the middle of the 19th century it was still popular in Europe, and to a less degree in America, but its favour has steadily declined since then.
The rules of Boston recognized in English-speaking countries differ somewhat from those in vogue in France. According to the former, two packs of 52 cards are used, which rank as in whist, both for cutting and dealing. Four players take part, and there are usually no partners. Counters are used, generally of three colours and values, and each hand is settled for as soon as finished. The entire first pack is dealt out by fours and fives, and the second pack is cut for the trump, the suit of the card turned being “first preference,” the other suit of the same colour “second preference” or “colour,” while the two remaining suits are “plain suits.” The eldest hand then announces that he will make a certain number of tricks provided he may name the trump, or lose a certain number without trumps. The different bids are called by various names, but the usual ones are as follows:—To win five tricks, “Boston.” (To win) “six tricks.” (To win) “seven tricks.” To lose twelve tricks, after discarding one card that is not shown, “little misère.” (To win) “eight tricks.” (To win) “nine tricks.” To lose every trick, “grand misère.” (To win) “ten tricks.” (To win) “eleven tricks.” To lose twelve tricks, after discarding one card that is not shown, the remaining twelve cards being exposed on the table but not liable to be called, “little spread.” (To win) “twelve tricks.” To lose every trick with exposed cards, “grand spread.” To win thirteen tricks, “grand slam.” If a player does not care to bid he may pass, and the next player bids. Succeeding players may “overcall,” i.e. overbid, previous bidders. Players passing may thereafter bid only “misères.” If a player bids seven but makes ten he is paid for the three extra tricks, but on a lower scale than if he had bid ten. If no bid should be made, a “misère partout” (general poverty) is often played, the trump being turned down and each player striving to take as few tricks as possible. Payments are made by each loser according to the value of the winner’s bid and the overtricks he has scored. There are regular tables of payments. In America overtricks are not usually paid for. In French Boston the knave of diamonds arbitrarily wins over all other cards, even trumps. The names of the different bids remind one of the period of the American Revolution, including “Independence,” “Philadelphia,” “Souveraine,” “Concordia,” &c. Other variations of the game are Boston de Fontainebleau and Russian Boston.
BOSTONITE, in petrology, a fine-grained, pale-coloured, grey
or pinkish rock, which consists essentially of alkali-felspar
(orthoclase, microperthite, &c.). Some of them contain a small
amount of interstitial quartz (quartz bostonites); others have a
small percentage of lime, which occasions the presence of a
plagioclase felspar (maenite, gauteite, lime-bostonite). Other
minerals, except apatite, zircon and magnetite, are typically
absent. They have very much the same composition as the
trachytes; and many rocks of this series have been grouped
with these or with the orthophyres. Typically they occur as
dikes or as thin sills, often in association with nepheline-syenite;
and they seem to bear a complementary relationship to certain
types of lamprophyre, such as camptonite and monchiquite.
Though nowhere very common they have a wide distribution,
being known from Scotland, Wales, Massachusetts, Montreal,
Portugal, Bohemia, &c. The lindoites and quartz-lindoites of
Norway are closely allied to the bostonites.
BOSTRÖM, CHRISTOFFER JACOB (1797–1866), Swedish
philosopher, was born at Piteå and studied at Upsala, where
from 1840 to 1863 he was professor of practical philosophy.
His philosophy, as he himself described it, is a thoroughgoing
rational idealism founded on the principle that the only true
reality is spiritual. God is Infinite Spirit in whom all existence
is contained, and is outside the limitations of time and space.
Thus Boström protests not only against empiricism but also
against those doctrines of Christian theology which seemed to
him to picture God as something less than Pure Spirit. In ethics
the highest aim is the direction of actions by reason in harmony
with the Divine; so the state, like the individual, exists solely in
God, and in its most perfect form consists in the harmonious
obedience of all its members to a constitutional monarch; the
perfection of mankind as a whole is to be sought in a rational
orderly system of such states in obedience to Universal Reason.
This system differs from Platonism in that the “ideas” of God
are not archetypal abstractions but concrete personalities.
Boström’s writings were edited by H. Edfeldt (2 vols., Upsala, 1883). For his school see Sweden: Literature; also H. Höffding, Filosofien i Sverig (German trans. in Philos. Monatsheften, 1879), and History of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1900), p. 284; R. Falckenberg, Hist. of Phil. (Eng. trans., 1895); A. Nyblaeus, Om den Boströmske filosofien (Lund, 1883), and Karakteristik af den Boströmska filosofien (Lund, 1892).
BOSWELL, JAMES (1740–1795), Scottish man of letters, the
biographer of Samuel Johnson, was born at Edinburgh on the
29th of October 1740. His grandfather was in good practice at
the Scottish bar, and his father, Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck,
was also a noted advocate, who, on his elevation to the supreme
court in 1754, took the name of his Ayrshire property as Lord
Auchinleck. A Thomas Boswell (said upon doubtful evidence to
have been a minstrel in the household of James IV.) was killed at
Flodden, and since 1513 the family had greatly improved its
position in the world by intermarriage with the first Scots
nobility. In contradiction to his father, a rigid Presbyterian
Whig, James was “a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed
for King James until his uncle Cochrane gave him a shilling to
pray for King George, which he accordingly did” (“Whigs of all
ages are made in the same way” was Johnson’s comment).
He met one or two English boys, and acquired a “tincture of
polite letters” at the high school in Edinburgh. Like R. L.
Stevenson, he early frequented society such as that of the actors
at the Edinburgh theatre, sternly disapproved of by his father.
At the university, where he was constrained for a season to study
civil law, he met William Johnson Temple, his future friend and
correspondent. The letters of Boswell to his “Atticus” were
first published by Bentley in 1857. One winter he spent at
Glasgow, where he sat under Adam Smith, who was then lecturing
on moral philosophy and rhetoric.
In 1760 he was first brought into contact with “the elegance, the refinement and the liberality” of London society, for which he had long sighed. The young earl of Eglintoun took him to Newmarket and introduced him into the society of “the great, the gay and the ingenious.” He wrote a poem called “The Cub at Newmarket,” published by Dodsley in 1762, and had visions of entering the Guards. Reclaimed with some difficulty by his father from his rakish companions in the metropolis, he contrived to alleviate the irksomeness of law study in Edinburgh by forcing his acquaintance upon the celebrities then assembled in the northern capital, among them Kames, Blair, Robertson, Hume and Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), of whose sayings on the Northern Circuit he kept a brief journal. Boswell had already realized his vocation, the exercise of which was to give a new word to the language. He had begun to Boswellize. He was already on the track of bigger game—the biggest available in the Britain of that day. In the spring of 1763 Boswell came to a composition with his father. He consented to give up his pursuit of a guidon in the Guards and three and sixpence a day on condition that his father would allow him to study civil law on the continent. He set out in April 1763 by “the best road in Scotland” with a servant, on horseback like himself, in “a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes and long military boots.” On Monday, the 16th of May 1763, in the back shop of Tom Davies the bookseller, No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden, James Boswell first met “Dictionary Johnson,” the great man of his dreams, and was severely buffeted by him. Eight days later, on Tuesday, the 24th of May, Boswell boldly called on Mr Johnson at his chambers on the first floor of No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. On this occasion Johnson pressed him to stay; on the 13th of June he said, “Come to me as often as you can”; on the 25th of June Boswell gave the great man a little sketch of his own life, and Johnson exclaimed with warmth, “Give me your hand; I have
