doubt that much of an exaggerated awe amounting in many youthful minds to aversion to George Washington has grown out of this same treatment. His life had been written again and again by Marshall, Bancroft, Ramsay, Sparks, and even the irreverent Weems, and I am not aware that anybody, down to the genial Irving, had admitted that Washington could laugh. Even Irving keeps it for his fourth volume, and hides it in an obscure foot-note; but he finally admits that Washington, on one occasion, was so amused by a fieldincident, that he not only laughed, but could not stop laughing, and actually rolled on the ground before he could recover. Fancy the picture! More than six feet of Father of his Country rolling on the grass, trying to get to the end of a laugh! It seems like profanation; but would he not seem nearer to us, and nearer to the young people of America, had we been permitted to know that fact a little earlier? Yet from the moment when the President of this Society edited for us the diaries of Samuel Sewall, our Puritan Pepys, that nightmare of artificial dignity disappeared. We only honor the just and upright judge the more because our sympathies follow that courageous and unwearied heart in the wooing of a series of successive widows; and see him handing about at lawsuits, weddings, and funerals those little English and Latin verses which must have added new terrors to death, litigation, and courtship.

And so of the other step forward, - the meaning of a quotation mark. It is now well known that the historians of the last generation, influenced, perhaps, in America by the extraordinary liberties taken by Washington with his own letters, had no such impression as now exists of the precise and definite guarantee which a quotation mark should carry with it. I do not now refer to those accidental variations which are so hard to avoid, but to conscious and deliberate alteration, to revision, rearrangement, or undesignated omission, while the quotation marks still shelter all. It would be easy to illustrate this from men so eminent and honorable as Bancroft, Hildreth, and Frothingham. The long Sparks-Mahon controversy is still remembered. I have in my possession the manuscript material for a very conspicuous biography published nearly half a century ago, and edited by men as absolutely conscientious as ever existed. On comparison it appears

that not a letter nor a fragment of journal, scarcely even a sentence, was printed without revision and alteration, almost always of a literary character, and usually quite needless; and all these garbled passages were included within the sanctity of quotation marks, without a hint on the part of the editors that they were not giving the precise words of the original. I am satisfied that one great reason of the vastly higher standard of accuracy which now prevails, is the continued example of this and kindred societies in preserving the original spelling and quoting verbatim et literatim when they quote at all.

May the Society, under your guidance, Mr. President, go on to vindicate, in this and in all ways, its high career of usefulness! Who shall participate in its next Centennial we know not we only know that not one of us will be there. The building in which we meet may endure until that day, but we shall not, nor can we guide our successors. May the Society itself be as long-lived as the State from which it takes its name! Cradled amid the storms of revolution, may it prolong its usefulness through coming centuries of happy peace!

The doxology was sung by the whole congregation standing:

"From all that dwell below the skies,
Let the Creator's praise arise;
Let the Redeemer's name be sung,
Through every land, by every tongue!

"Eternal are thy mercies, Lord!

Eternal truth attends thy word:

Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore,

Till suns shall rise and set no more."

The benediction was then pronounced by the Rev. Dr. ALEXANDER MCKENZIE :

As God was with the fathers, so may he be with the children.

The Lord bless you and keep you:

The Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you:

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you

peace.

And the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

After the conclusion of the exercises in the church, an informal reception was given by the senior member, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, at his residence, No. 90 Marlborough Street. Of the ninety-seven members on the roll on the day of the commemoration, the presence of sixty-five was recorded; five were absent in Europe, three were engaged in the public service at Washington; and several others were absent from the State or were detained by serious illness and other unavoidable causes. The weather was remarkably mild and pleasant.1

At the monthly meeting of the Society in March, 1844, "the President communicated from Dr. Lowell a suggestion as to the expediency of celebrating the termination of the first half-century of the incorporation of the Society." The suggestion was subsequently adopted, and a committee was appointed, composed of Isaac P. Davis, Francis C. Gray, Alexander Young, Charies F. Adams, and William Minot, "to make arrangements for the place, hour, and manner of proceeding in the celebration." Under their direction, an address by John Gorham Palfrey was delivered in the Masonic Temple, at the corner of Tremont Street and Temple Place, Thursday afternoon, Oct. 31, 1844, at halfpast three o'clock. The "Boston Daily Advertiser " of the following day says: "Mr. Palfrey's Address before the Historical Society, yesterday afternoon, was listened to by a large and highly discriminating audience with great pleasure. It was a performance worthy of the speaker's high reputation, and that of the Society which he represented. We regret that the very unseasonable hour selected for the discourse prevented a still larger attendance. As it was, there was a full representation of the Society, among whose members we noticed the venerable John Quincy Adams, and many ladies were also present." Rev. Dr. Pierce, who was present at the stated meeting of the Society, held on the same day, makes no reference in his journal to the commemorative exercises; and there is no account of them in the records of the Society. The address is printed in 3 Coll. IX. 165–188.

FEBRUARY MEETING, 1891.

THE stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 12th instant, at three o'clock, P. M., the President, Dr. GEORGE E. ELLIS, in the chair.

After the reading of the record of the last stated meeting, the Recording Secretary read a letter of acceptance from Judge William S. Shurtleff, who was in Europe at the time of his election as a Resident Member, and who had just returned home.

The Librarian read the list of donors to the Library for the last month. Among the accessions was a manuscript journal, in five quarto volumes, kept by Charles Pickering, M.D., during the years 1838-1841, when he was connected with the Antarctic Exploring Expedition sent out by the United States Government, and bequeathed to the Society by his widow. There was also a manuscript, given by Miss Elizabeth Frame, of Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, containing sketches of sixteen ministers settled in that Province during the last century, of whom eleven were graduates of Harvard College, as well as other interesting matter.

The Cabinet-keeper called attention to two fine portraits, by Copley, of Samuel Quincy and his wife, which had been placed on deposit with the Society by Mr. Quincy Phillips, of Cambridge, their great-grandson. Samuel Quincy was an older brother of Josiah Quincy, Jr., but adhered to the British Government, and was Solicitor-General at the time of the socalled Boston Massacre. The maiden name of Mrs. Quincy was Hannah Hill.

The PRESIDENT then spoke as follows: —

Those of us who attended the funeral rites of our late eminent and highly esteemed associate, Charles Devens, as well as those who have followed the numerous and earnest eulogiums of him, in public and private, have had an impressive reminder of the many points at which he touched the highest interests and hearts of this community. Those funeral rites,

with their union of religious and military observances, and the full assembling and participation of those who represent the responsibilities and honors of our professional and social life, were our homage to the soldier and the jurist, the general and the judge. Like Sir Harry Vane, of Milton's sonnet, he knew "the bounds of either sword," of war and peace. Not a word. of exception has found utterance to the universal and varied tributes paid to him as the leader of an army and the high magistrate on the bench. But besides all these have been the expressions of esteem and warm attachment in private relations, for the charms and the dignity, the refinement and the urbanity, which gave such a singular attractiveness to his character, to his features, to his speech, and his whole presence. It was by these that we knew him best, and so esteemed him as our associate here in the patriotism of our historical studies.

We would place upon our records this expression of our regret in parting with him, and our memory of him for all that he was.

Mr. JOHN C. ROPES, being called on, said:

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, It is not easy for me —it would not be easy, I imagine, for many of us here—to speak of our good friend General Devens in the way in which the world at large would expect that we should speak of him. He was eminently a public man,- for nearly all his life he was in the public service, and for far the greater part of his mature life he occupied posts of high honor and trust; and all these positions he filled faithfully and with distinction. Yet we do not think of him, now that he has gone, so much as an eminent and honored servant of the State, but rather as a friend, a loyal, warm-hearted, cordial, unvarying, unaffected friend and neighbor. For such he was, first and foremost. His heart was warm; his character sound and sweet; his feelings quick and spontaneous; his behavior modest, while full of real dignity; his whole attitude to other men genuinely kind and considerate, free from every description of pride, vanity, or affectation. No more companionable man ever lived. No man so much in the world was ever less worldly than he. The native kindliness and sincerity of his nature withstood all the temptations of high office and of public life. He was always the same to