MEMOIR

OF THE

HON. SETH AMES.

BY E. R. HOAR.

SETH AMES, the sixth of the seven children of the eminent lawyer, orator, and statesman, Fisher Ames, was born at Dedham, April 19, 1805, and died at Brookline, Aug. 15, 1881. He was descended in the sixth generation from Richard Ames, of Bruton, Somersetshire, England, two of whose sons came to New England as early as 1640. His mother was Frances, daughter of Colonel John Worthington, of Springfield. His earliest recollection was of the funeral of his father, who died July 4, 1808.

From school at Dedham he went to Phillips Academy in Andover, from which he entered Harvard College in 1821. In the winter of his Junior year he taught a school in Weston, and in the next winter one at Groton. His college chum was Augustus H. Fiske, and they afterward married sisters, the daughters of Captain Gamaliel Bradford, and descendants from Governor Bradford. While in college, he held a respectable rank in his class, and gained a first Bowdoin Prize for an English Dissertation. Graduating in 1825, he studied his profession in the Law School at Cambridge, and then for a year in the office of George Bliss, of Springfield. In January, 1828, he entered the office of Lemuel Shaw, of Boston, where he remained until he was admitted to the bar at Dedham in September of the same year, and then opened an office in Lowell. In 1830 he married Miss Margaret Bradford, who was the mother of his six children, two of whom died in infancy. She died in 1847.

He soon acquired a respectable and leading position at the bar; was for some time the partner of the Hon. Thomas Hopkinson; and possessed the confidence and respect of the whole community in which he was established. He was a Representative from Lowell to the General Court in 1832; an

Alderman of that city in from Middlesex County in Lowell from 1842 to 1849. for about five months.

1836, 1837, and 1840; a Senator 1841; and the City Solicitor of In 1848 he travelled in Europe

In 1849 he was appointed Clerk of the Courts for Middlesex County; married, as his second wife, Abigail Fisher Dana, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Dana, of Marblehead; and changed his residence from Lowell to Cambridge. He held the office of Clerk for ten years, and discharged its duties with an accuracy, courtesy, and fidelity, which made him a universal favorite with the bench and the bar. During the same period he was frequently selected as an auditor and referee, and in these capacities exhibited judicial qualities which made his promotion to the bench desired and approved.

He was made an Associate Justice of the Superior Court in 1859, Chief Justice of the same court in 1867, and was commissioned as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court on the 19th of January, 1869, which place he held until broken health and the advancing infirmities of age induced his resignation on the fifteenth day of January, 1881.

In 1854 he published the "Works of Fisher Ames, with a Selection from his Speeches and Correspondence," in two octavo volumes.

He was elected a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dec. 8, 1864, and continued a member to his death. After his elevation to the bench he removed his residence from Cambridge to Brookline.

This brief outline contains the principal incidents of an honorable, useful, and happy life. Firm, upright, and conscientious in the discharge of duty, he was trusted by his fellow-men, and no trust reposed in him was ever betrayed. He was wholly without pretence or affectation, simple, direct, and sincere. He had a refined taste and a singularly pure and lucid use of the English language. He seemed to be without ambition, valuing excellence and desert for their own. sake; but with a modesty ever disposed to underrate his own claims to consideration. He had quick perceptions, and a playful humor; a cheerful, sunny temper, and a friendliness which attracted friendship. And so he filled out his long life with service and kindliness, and passed away beloved by his family and kindred, by neighbors and friends, and by the Commonwealth to whose service he gave his best powers, leaving behind him an unspotted memory of "sweetness and light."

DECEMBER MEETING, 1882.

The stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 14th instant, at 3 o'clock P.M.; the President in the chair. There was a large attendance of members to welcome Mr. Winthrop on his return from an eight months' absence in Europe.

The record of the previous meeting was read and accepted. The Librarian reported the monthly list of donors to the Library. The gifts included the privately printed work of an associate member, Mr. Williams Latham, "Epitaphs in Old Bridgewater, Massachusetts."

The Cabinet-keeper reported the gifts to the Cabinet, and also that the valuable collection of autographs given to the Society by the children of Mrs. Grenville Temple Winthrop, in June, 1879, and referred at that time to a committee for examination and arrangement, was now returned, carefully mounted and bound in seven thick volumes. The thanks of the Society were voted to Judge Chamberlain, under whose supervision the work had been performed, and that gentleman was requested to prepare an account of these autographs for publication in the Proceedings.

The Corresponding Secretary reported that Messrs. Putnam and Bugbee had accepted their elections as Resident Members.

The PRESIDENT then spoke as follows:

I heartily wish, Gentlemen, that I could command any adequate phrases at this moment for expressing how glad I am, and how grateful to a kind Providence, in finding myself once more at home, and once more in this long-accustomed seat with so many familiar and friendly surroundings. I have, indeed, seen much and enjoyed much since I left you last March, wonders of nature and of art, splendid cities, glorious mountains, and illustrious men of more than one land. Yet I can honestly say that, on my own account only, I would willingly have foregone all such experiences, and that no return could have been too early for my personal satisfaction. An absence of eight full months, I need not say, has made a considerable rent in the little remnant of life which I can reasonably count upon. It has certainly cut the continuity of any historical pursuits in which I was engaged or interested, and left it not altogether easy for me to gather up

the scattered or broken threads even for so informal an occasion as this. But I will not appeal to your indulgence, as I know it will be granted without being asked for.

Meantime, I rejoice to know that there has been no break in the well-being of our old Society. It has been a great pleasure to me to learn, from month to month, of its undiminished prosperity, and of its new volumes and serials; and I desire at once to return my thanks, and your thanks, also, to our worthy Vice-President, Dr. Ellis, for his faithful and felicitous occupancy of the chair. We have lost, indeed, from our roll of Resident, or of Corresponding and Honorary, Members, more than one of those most loved and most honored by us all. I need not name them. They are fresh in all our hearts and on all our lips, and the choicest tributes have already been paid to their memories by those whose praises they would most have prized, and who have hardly left one appropriate or affectionate word to be added by others. Nothing, certainly, could have been more exhaustive or more exquisite than the notices of Emerson and Longfellow, by some of their associates here. They have been read with appreciation and admiration abroad, as well as at home, as I have had the best opportunity of knowing. And hardly less impressive or less touching were the tributes paid here and elsewhere to the life and character of good Dr. Chandler Robbins, so long one of our most devoted and effective workers, and one whom no disabilities or infirmities could keep away from our meetings to the last. As I look back upon our Society, through more than a quarter of a century, to the days when I succeeded Mr. Savage as President, the forms of George Livermore and Richard Frothingham and Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and Chandler Robbins - all now gone-rise at once to my view, in company with at most two or three others still spared to us, and whose modesty I will not wound by naming them, as the little band to whose efforts we are most indebted for whatever prosperity we have since enjoyed.

But I will not dwell longer on any thing sad or retrospective this afternoon. Let me rather turn at once to welcome the new associates who have succeeded to so many vacant chairs since I went away; and let me express the confident hope that they may fulfil all the promises which led to their selection, and add new vigor to the ranks of our working members. Those ranks have long needed recruiting. We can part, if in the providence of God it must be so, with our philosophers and poets and orators, sacred or secular, much as we may deplore their loss, and much as we may miss the

prestige which their names have given to our rolls, and the delight of their occasional participation in our proceedings; but the practical work of our Society must always have those who are able and willing to perform it. Those we can never spare. Nor ought we ever to be unmindful of so great a need, in filling the places of those who pass away.

Turning abruptly now from this merely introductory matter, I hasten to refer briefly to one or two incidents of my tour which are not without historical interest. And first, I desire to express the special satisfaction I took in procuring, at the request of Dr. Deane and Mr. Winsor, a perfect reproduction by photography of the old map in the National Library of France, commonly known as the Map of Sebastian Cabot, and which bears the date of 1544. A recent writer on "The English in America," Mr. J. A. Doyle, a Fellow of All-Souls, Oxford, of whose volume I procured a copy just as I was leaving London, in his notice of Sebastian Cabot, says that "he published maps and documents," but that they are now "unhappily lost." In his appendix, however, he refers distinctly to this map as attributed to Cabot, while he raises the question whether the inscriptions could possibly have been written by him. I do not propose to discuss this question. The first copy of the map was presented here last month, or the month before the last, in pieces, or, as the French style them, in separate clichés, and there is a copy here to-day made up and mounted. It has been referred to a committee of experts, and it will be for them to pronounce upon any disputed or doubtful points. Meantime, I allude to the subject now only for the purpose of putting on our records an acknowledgment of the kind reception I met with at the Bibliothèque Nationale, from M. Léopold Delisle, a member of the Institute, and the Administrator General of the Library; from M. Thiéry, the Custodian of the Prints, to whose department the old map belongs; and from M. Letort, to whom Dr. Deane had sent me a letter. All these gentlemen manifested a cordial interest in the work. As a part of the arrangement, two copies of the mounted photograph were retained by the Library, agreeably to the rules in all such cases; and thus it is pleasant to know that, through our intervention, there will henceforth be some assurance, that if any accident should happen to the precious original, a perfect copy will be in the way of preservation on both sides of the Atlantic. I must not fail, in this connection, to mention the name of M. Sauvanaud, the skilful photographer, who took the greatest pains with the work, and