PREFACE. THIS Volume comprises the record of eleven stated meetings of the Society, from May, 1896, to June, 1897, both inclusive, and of a special meeting held in July, 1897, to authorize the erection of a new building. During this period the estate, a part or the whole of which the Society had owned and occupied for more than sixty years, was sold and delivered to the City of Boston, and a removal to temporary quarters became necessary. It has been thought desirable, therefore, to present as a frontispiece to the volume a view of the Dowse Library, from a plate prepared under the direction of our late associate GEORGE LIVERMORE, one of the executors of the will of Thomas Dowse, to whom we were mainly indebted for Mr. Dowse's munificent gift. The engraving represents the room as it appeared when it was first occupied in 1857, and as it remained until 1872. When the building was reconstructed in that year, it was necessary to open a door behind the President's chair to give access to the newspaper room built over the vacant land between the Society's building and the Probate building, and to transfer the portrait of Mr. Dowse to the place between the windows overlooking the burialground. The clock was placed over the main entrance; the Society's seal was removed to the wall over the door to the newspaper room; and Stuart's unfinished portrait of Edward Everett, the only portrait in Mr. Dowse's own room at Cambridge, was hung where the clock appears in the engraving. In all other respects the room re mained unchanged, except by the hanging of a chandelier, and the setting up, in 1868, of a bust of George Peabody, another of the great benefactors of the Society. Of the Resident Members on our roll to-day only fifteen were chosen before these changes were made; but with this explanation all our present members will readily recall the appearance of the room around which so many associations cluster. Besides various matters connected with the financial condition and plans of the Society, the volume contains much of a more general interest. Of the miscellaneous papers, the communications by JUSTIN WINSOR on the Cabot Controversies, on the manuscript of Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, and on Baptista Agnese and American Cartography; by WILLIAM R. THAYER, on Youth and Revolutions; by SAMUEL A. GREEN, on the Early History of Printing in America; the diary of Lieutenant Dudley Bradstreet at the Siege of Louisburg; the remarks by SAMUEL E. HERRICK and ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN on the anniversary of the death of Melanchthon; and the tributes to the members whose deaths are recorded in the volume, are especially noteworthy. There are also memoirs of ANDREW P. PEABODY, by Edward J. Young; of OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, by John T. Morse, Jr.; of JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, by A. Lawrence Lowell; of RUFUS CHOATE, by Clement Hugh Hill; of HAMILTON A. HILL, by Samuel E. Herrick; of WILLIAM S. SHURTLEff, by George S. Merriam; of LEVERETT SALTONSTALL, by Charles R. Codman; and of HENRY L. PIERCE, by James M. Bugbee, each of which is accompanied by a portrait. For the Committee, BOSTON, September 17, 1897. CHARLES C. SMITH. Remarks by ROBERT C. WINTHROP, Jr., in communicating 7 Paper by WILLIAM H. WHITMORE, on a manuscript Index to Remarks by SAMUEL A. GREEN, in announcing a gift from Mrs. On the importance of the issues involved in the Presiden- Remarks by HENRY W. HAYNES, on the death of Ernst Curtius 118 Remarks by SAMUEL A. GREEN, on the bibliography of Remarks by WILLIAM P. UPHAM, on some old manuscripts JANUARY MEETING, 1897. Petition to Congress for the preservation of the Frigate "Con- Paper by EDWARD G. PORTER, on the Morse Tablet at Rome 282 |