The chapter explores Lowell’s awareness of Boston’s complex class-marked topography. The Beacon Hill has become only a shorthand term for an anachronistically elite neighborhood, and we have become oblivious to the significance of its specific addresses. The Hill, however, was always intricately zoned and stratified, riven with class and ethnic conflict. Lowell’s story of his family moving from house to house within the Beacon Hill and then further and further east down the Back Bay is a dramatic story of social decline. The chapter also looks, in Lowell’s poetry and prose, for traces of the analogous class conflict over the downtown Boston’s public green spaces. The Lowells found themselves first “on the wrong side” of the Beacon Hill, then in the less prestigious section of the Back Bay impinged upon by the lesser castes. They enjoyed their leisure in the manicured Public Garden whose serenity was threatened by the messy, plebeian, enclosure-resisting Common.

It is generally acknowledged that Hinduism, as the name of a distinct religion, did not exist before the nineteenth century. Before that, “Hindu” had simply meant “Indian” and encompassed a variety of beliefs and practices (diffuse spirituality). There were also indigenous “Thomas Christians” dating fromthe 1st century CE. When missionaries arrived, lower caste groups found Christianity attractive. A sea-change occurred around the nineteenth century when Westerners found “Hinduism” to be incurably superstitious. Indians responded by reforming their practices (towards concentrated spirituality). Christianity continued to appeal to marginalized groups such as women, untouchables, and aboriginal ethnic groups. Hindu nationalists continue to view Christianity with suspicion.