An image of Boston just one month prior to the outbreak of hostilities at Lexington and Concord. The heading of the accompanying text states ‘Observations on the State of Boston, Massachuset’s-Bay, and other Colonies, made in travelling through the middle Settlements of North-America, by the Revd. Andrew Burnaby, A. M. Vicar of Greenwich, with a View of the Town of Boston, finely engraved’. There follows six pages of text. There follows at the end ‘As the Affairs of America at present engross so considerable a Share of pubic Attention, we thought it expedient to lay before the Readers the following List of Maps, Plans, and Views of the English Colonies which have appeared in the Course of our Publications …’. The perspective of the view is from Cambridge looking across the Charles River at the city directly in front of the Common. The original image was drawn by Governor Thomas Pownall and published in the ‘Scenographia Americana’ in 1768.