sertion in the Constitution of Massachusetts of the declaration, "All men are born free and equal," which was afterwards judicially decided to have abolished slavery in this State. Judge Lowell's oldest son, John Lowell, was a brilliant lawyer, a leading spirit among the Federalists, and the oracle of that party in Massachusetts. His only son, John Amory Lowell, was the father of Augustus Lowell, who was born in Boston on the 15th of January, 1830. His mother was a daughter of the Hon. Samuel Putnam, for nearly thirty years a judge of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.

Augustus Lowell was fitted for college at the Boston Latin School. He was a manly, frank, honest, highspirited boy, a person of influence with his classmates, and possessing the confidence and good will of his teachers. He entered Harvard at the age of sixteen, and was graduated in 1850. After leaving college, he travelled in Europe with his father and family for about a year. Returning in 1851, he went into the counting-room of Bullard & Lee, a firm composed of the late William Bullard and Colonel Henry Lee, who were at that time leading merchants in the East India trade. He remained two years with them, and then went to Lowell to study manufacturing. He was subsequently for a time with the firm of James M. Beebe, Morgan & Co., where his business education was completed.

He then formed a partnership with Mr. Franklin H. Story, and had a counting-room on Central Wharf. They were engaged in the East India business, and continued in that until the crisis of 1857 put an end for the time being to the Calcutta trade here, and to many of the traders, though it is believed that by his India business Mr. Lowell rather made than lost money.

Judge Lowell's second son, Francis Cabot Lowell, was in early life a merchant; but when the British orders in council made a British protection necessary to secure vessels from capture on the high seas, and Napoleon's decrees directed the confiscation of any vessel and its cargo provided with such a protection, foreign commerce for the Americans became so hazardous as to be practically impossible, and Mr. Francis Lowell conceived the idea that, as we were much nearer the cotton fields of the South, we ought to be able to manufacture cotton goods for ourselves instead of importing them from England. The first experiment in this direction was made at Waltham; and, as its success justified engaging in the business on a larger scale, Mr. Lowell and his associates started new mills at the falls of the Merrimac, and called the settlement Lowell.

John Amory Lowell was early interested with his uncle in his manufacturing business, was one of the founders of Lowell, and at a later date of the city of Lawrence. The financial crisis of 1857 affected very severely the cotton. mills in Massachusetts, and Mr. Lowell found his property for the moment seriously impaired. Augustus, who had just retired from the East India business, took a desk in his father's office, that he might assist him in the management of his affairs; and in this office he remained until his father's death.

He had married in 1854 the younger daughter of the Hon. Abbott Lawrence; and in 1864 he went abroad on account of her illness, and remained away a couple of years.

In 1875 he became treasurer of the Boott Cotton Mills. at Lowell, which had been built by his father; and he held this position for eleven years. He was also for a few months in 1877 the treasurer of the Merrimac Manufacturing Company, but was never afterwards the active manager

of any business. He was, however, connected as president or director with a large number of business corporations; was for years one of the governing body of the Provident Institution for Savings, and from 1898 its president; was a director of the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Company; for twenty years was president of the Boston Gas Light Company, and connected with many other manufacturing and business corporations, in the management of which he took great interest and was often an important factor. He was a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and vice-president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He never held but one public position he was one of the Boston School Committee in the years 1857-58. He did, however, in two capacities, a great work for the public benefit. Upon the death of his father in 1881 he became the trustee of the Lowell Institute. The objects of this trust are, perhaps, too well known to need any enumeration here; but a brief statement of them may not be altogether amiss.

John Lowell, Jr., a cousin and brother-in-law of Mr. Augustus Lowell's father, created by his will a trust, the income of which was to be devoted to the maintenance and support of public lectures to be delivered in Boston, upon philosophy, natural history, the arts and sciences, and such other subjects as the trustee for the time being should think expedient. Mr. John Amory Lowell, Augustus Lowell's father, was the trustee named in the will, which contained a provision that each trustee should appoint his own successor. The trust became operative in. 1839; and for more than sixty years the citizens of Boston have had in each winter, under the wise benevolence of its founder, and the

careful and judicious management of the successive trustees, the opportunity of hearing lectures from the best men in the various departments of philosophy, history, literature, and art, as well as the last word in scientific discovery from the leaders in their respective branches of study and investigation. It was to the munificence of its founder and the wisdom of its first trustee that we owed in 1846 the visit of Louis Agassiz, then the foremost naturalist of the day, who came here to lecture at the Lowell Institute, and, remaining here as a Harvard professor, inspired an enthusiasm for scientific investigation and study, which, beginning in his own department, spread into every other, and to which we owe the Agassiz Museum at Cambridge, a monument to his memory and to the scientific research and munificent liberality of his family.

To discharge thoroughly the duties of trustee of the Lowell Institute, in addition to those connected with the management of the property which constitutes its fund, requires, in making a wise selection of the subjects to be treated of, much thought, a sound judgment, attention to the wants and desires of the public who are to be instructed and a knowledge of the persons most competent to lecture upon these subjects.

Succeeding to this trust upon the death of his father in 1881, Mr. Augustus Lowell gave himself conscientiously, carefully, and intelligently to the duties thus imposed on him. He had never received any special scientific education or training; yet by his reading and study he made himself sufficiently familiar with scientific subjects to be able to judge of the merits of the lectures on these subjects, while he also kept himself so far in touch with the leading men and discoveries in science as to select wisely both the lecturers and the subjects which would be of most interest

and advantage to the public, and was so constant an attendant upon these lectures that he could judge of their value and fitness for a popular audience, and observe as. each course progressed the favor with which it was received by the public, as indicated by the increasing or diminishing numbers of the audience.

Besides the popular lectures, admission to which is to be had by ticket, the founder of the Lowell Institute provided by his will for others "more abstruse, erudite, and particular"; and under this clause lectures have been given for many years to advanced students under the direction of the Institute of Technology, as well as to the school-teachers of Boston, under the supervision of the Society of Natural History, and more recently to workingmen under the auspices of the Wells Memorial Workingmen's Institute; while the Lowell School of Industrial Design in connection with the Institute of Technology has been maintained from this fund for nearly thirty years.

In founding the Lowell Institute, John Lowell, Jr., builded better than he knew. He provided for the people of Boston opportunities of gratuitous instruction, improvement, and enjoyment far beyond anything that he in his lifetime could by possibility have anticipated. The importance and influence of the Lowell lectures has steadily increased, their scope has been constantly enlarged, and the public interest in them has continually grown. No record, however, of all that in sixty years the noble gift of John Lowell, Jr., has accomplished would be complete if it failed. to recognize how much is due to the skilful business management of the successive trustees, father and son, and to the fidelity and devotion with which they have endeavored to carry out the purposes of the generous giver in the spirit which inspired him. A casual observer, seeing only