Walking along the Commonwealth Avenue pedestrian mall heading westward from the Boston Common and Ritz Hotel street corner, one encounters many statues and monuments.

The mall begins with a conspicuous statue of Alexander Hamilton, and it ends when Mass. Avenue and the Massachusetts Turnpike conspire to beat the open green space into cemented thoroughfares.

Shortly before the Mass Pike and Mass. Ave intersect Commonwealth Avenue, though, Boylston Street divides the pedestrian mall in two, and, unmistakably, the statue of former Harvard Professor of History Samuel Eliot Morison '09 looms from the divide and the lush green behind it.

Morison's statue upholds the popular Cambridge and Boston monument style. Like many other sites around the city, it depicts a man and his message. In Morison's case, the message speaks to his philosophy on life.

The statue looks imposing because it stands almost 15 feet tall. The sculpture shows Morison sitting atop a rocky coastal bluff, readying his right hand to gaze through his binoculars. At the same time, Morison keeps watch, with his left hand on his knapsack and three thick books at his side.

Below his booted feet, the sculpture depicts the usual New England seacoast litter: seashells, a fiddler crab or two, strands of kelp, and driftwood. What captures most passersby, however, is a quotation of Morison's engraved on a rock at his left side: "Dream dreams, then write them down--aye, but live them first!"

Morrison resembles a venerable, ancient mariner straight from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge mold. Despite his silent grandeur, he bespeaks a certain aristocracy that has nothing to do with class or wealth.

On a clear, late spring day, hundreds of people pass the Morison statue. A few breeze on by--usually there are bikers or roller bladers or skaters. Others stop for a while to notice and admire the sculpture. Still others use the statue's location as a benchmark or rendezvous point.

"They put up the statue in the late 1970s, early 1980s," said Phillip I. Cheever of Stanhope Street in Boston. "And ever since then, I've guided every visiting, out-of-town friend to my house via the statue. Not to mention, I think his intimation about life and dreams accurately describes how I want to feel most of the time."