FEBRUARY MEETING, 1883.

The regular meeting was held in the Society's rooms, on Thursday, the 8th instant, at 3 o'clock P.M.; the President, Mr. WINTHROP, in the chair.

The record of the last meeting was read and accepted.

The Librarian presented the report of gifts made to the Library during the preceding month.

The Corresponding Secretary announced that he had received letters from the Rev. Charles R. Weld and Professor H. B. Adams, accepting their election as Corresponding Members.

Mr. Slafter presented to the Library a Latin Bible printed at Amsterdam in 1669, consisting of a translation of the Old Testament made by Tremellius and Junius, bound up with Beza's translation of the New Testament, and which had belonged to several well-known persons, including Mather Byles.

The President also presented a copy of the "History of Augusta County, Virginia," by Mr. J. Lewis Peyton, and then made the following remarks: —

My first duty this afternoon, Gentlemen, is to announce, for formal entry on our records, the death of a valued Corresponding Member, Professor George Washington Greene, LL.D., whose name has been on our roll for only five days less than twenty years. He died at his home in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on the 2d instant, having been born on the 8th of April, 1811, and having thus nearly completed the seventy-second year of his age.

He was a man, as you all know, of extensive and varied accomplishments. His protracted residence abroad, — from 1827 to 1847,- during eight years of which he was United States Consul at Rome, had rendered the languages and literature of other lands, and especially of Italy, almost as familiar to him as those of his own land. Immediately after his return from Europe, in 1847, he was made Professor of Modern Languages in Brown University, which he had left, as an undergraduate, twenty years before, on account of ill health. After five years of successful service in that sphere, he spent thirteen or fourteen years in New York, as a teacher

and a student of history. "A Short History of Rhode Island" and an "Historical Review of the American Revolution" were among the fruits of this period.

But his principal work, and that by which his name will be longest remembered hereafter, was an elaborate and valuable biography of his illustrious grandfather, - General Nathanael Greene, in three large volumes, published successively between 1867 and 1871. The dedication of that work to Longfellow, in a brilliant letter recounting their early associations in Naples, is one among many illustrations of the intimate friendship and warm attachment which existed between them. As long as Longfellow lived, Greene was one of his favorite guests, often an inmate of his family circle, and, after infirmities had begun to press heavily upon him, the subject of a touching tenderness. One can easily imagine that the loss of such a friend as Longfellow had been to him, even though wife and children and a venerable mother were still left, may have quickened the approach of an end which has long been anticipated by those who were in the way of observing his condition.

He will be respectfully remembered by us all.

And now, before calling on the Section from which communications are first in order to-day, I will venture to occupy a short time with a few jottings of recent journeyings, which, while containing but little that is new, may serve to put on our records some facts of more or less historical interest.

I did not omit the opportunity, during my late tour, to visit some of the places in England which are specially associated with our earliest colonial history. Before going to London, in April last, I found my way first to that little circle in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, not far from Lincolnshire, on which good Joseph Hunter, the antiquarian, of whom Dr. Deane has written a memoir for us, so fitly inscribed the legend, "Maximæ gentis incunabula," and of which the little market town of Bawtry is the centre. From Bawtry I drove a mile or two to Austerfield, and visited the church in which, according to the old parish records, still preserved, William Bradford was baptized on the nineteenth day of March, 1589. The church, a very small one, is in decent condition, and is still used to some extent for public worship. A woodcut of it is in the "Century" for January. But I was sorry to observe that the old font from which Bradford was christened, and which is said to have been used at one time as a horse-trough on a neighboring farm, is lying in a corner unmounted; while

a modern substitute, of smaller dimensions and ordinary quality, has usurped its place. The surroundings of the church, too, and the access to it, are any thing but what they should be. Very ill-looking buildings obstruct the view of it from the road, and the door is approached by a lane which suggests only the way to a barn. I could not help thinking that our numerous Pilgrim societies in all parts of the country might well unite in an effort to render this ancient edifice, associated with the infancy of one of the chief of the Pilgrim Fathers, their historian, and so long their governor, more sightly and more accessible. I doubt not that our friend Lord Houghton, who is the lord of the manor, would readily give his assent, if nothing more, to any plan for at least clearing away the rubbish which disfigures the view, and for giving something of dignity to the outlook of a building which New Englanders must always regard with so much interest. The old font, now that it has been rescued from ignoble and profane uses, should certainly have a pedestal and an inscription, and, if not restored to its original place, should no longer be left on the floor, in an untidy corner.

From Austerfield we drove along a few miles to Scrooby, and saw the only fragments which remain of that "Manor of the Bishops" in which Elder Brewster lived, and in which the members of the church of which the sainted Robinson was pastor, and which fled first to Leyden and thence to Plymouth Rock, "ordinarily met on the Lord's Day." A few bits of carved timber in a barn are about all that can pretend to have belonged to that famous manor, formerly a palace of the archbishops of York, in which Cardinal Wolsey once found refuge, and which Henry VIII. selected for a resting-place during one of his royal progresses. But one or two stately trees suggested a possibility that they might have been witnesses of the devotions of Brewster and Robinson; and under their shade we rested our horses and refreshed ourselves at midday. Some simple memorial,-a shaft, if not a schoolhouse or a chapel, erected by the sons and daughters of New England, -as I ventured to say on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the landing at Plymouth, — might well mark a spot on which our Pilgrim Fathers ordinarily met for the worship of God before they fled to Holland, and which no New Englander should cross the ocean without visiting.

Coming down from those old abodes of Bradford and Brewster, I stopped for a day or two at Cambridge, where, somewhere within the shadows of Emmanuel or St. John's or

Trinity, on the 29th of August, 1629, Saltonstall and Dudley and Isaac Johnson and John Winthrop and eight others adopted and signed that memorable Agreement which led to the successful plantation of Massachusetts; and from there, by a natural sequence, crossed over to Groton, and visited the place where Governor Winthrop dwelt before he proceeded to execute that Cambridge Agreement, and come over to America. The outlines of the cellar of his house may still be traced. The venerable mulberry-tree, the only survivor of his garden, is still propped up, and bears an occasional berry. And the little Groton church, I am happy to say, has of late been admirably cared for. The stucco or plaster has been scraped off from the outer walls, and the original rubble of which it was built uncovered; the old family tomb, in which the father and mother of the Governor were buried, has been thoroughly restored; the brass which had marked the burial-place of his grandfather has found fit exhibition in the chancel; and more than one memorial window completes the story of those who were lords of the manor and patrons of the living from the Reformation in Old England until its legitimate fruit in the settlement of New England.

But before completing this little circuit through the places peculiarly associated with our Pilgrim and Puritan history, I could not omit a brief stop at Boston, in Lincolnshire, where, with Canon Blenkin, the genial and obliging vicar, I spent an hour in the beautiful church of St. Botolph and in the little chapel of John Cotton. I can add nothing in regard to that church and chapel to what you all have seen or heard. But there was one small brass, somewhat recently placed on the inner walls of the church, which attracted my attention, and of which the verger was good enough to give me a copy, or rubbing. It interested me both on account of the man whom it commemorated and on account of the striking and touching character of the inscription. The man was the late Henry Hallam, the distinguished historian, a former Honorary Member of this Society, a friend of Everett and Ticknor, and whom I also had the privilege of knowing personally on my first visit to England. I shall not soon, if ever, forget the charming breakfast which I enjoyed at his own table on May Day, 1847,-nearly thirty-six years ago,

in company with the Lyells, the Milmans, Dr. Joseph Hunter, and others. Of that party I am the only survivor, as I am of not a few other English entertainments of that period. But the inscription, of which I obtained the copy,

purports to come from Hallam's daughter. It sets forth his claim to the remembrance of others, and her own affection for him, in brief and terse Latin, to which no translation can do entire justice. It is as follows:

AD MEMORIAM

HENRICI HALLAM

HISTORICI

QUI PRIMUS INTER RERUM ANGLICARUM SCRIPTORES
HANC SIBI LEGEM IMPOSUIT

UT TAMQUAM JUDEX IN TRIBUNALI SEDENS

SINE PARTIUM STUDIO VERUM RECTUMQUE DECERNERET.

PATREM OPTIMUM ATAVIS ORTUM BOSTONIENSIBUS CUJUS MAGNUM APUD OMNES NOMEN IPSA DOMI ET IN SINU FOVET HOC ERE INSIGNIRI VOLUIT

FILIA.

"TO THE MEMORY OF HENRY HALLAM,

HISTORIAN,

WHO FIRST AMONG WRITERS ON ENGLISH AFFAIRS

IMPOSED THIS LAW UPON HIMSELF,

THAT, AS A JUDGE SEATED UPON A TRIBUNAL,
WITHOUT REGARD TO PARTIES, HE WOULD DECIDE WHAT WAS
TRUE AND RIGHT.

HIS DAUGHTER

HAS DESIRED TO COMMEMORATE BY THIS BRASS

THE BEST OF FATHERS, SPRUNG FROM BOSTON ANCESTORS, WHOSE NAME, GREAT AMONG ALL, SHE CHERISHES FONDLY AT HOME AND IN HER OWN BOSOM."

The fact that Hallam's ancestors were of Boston, Lincolnshire, may be new to others, as it certainly was to myself. His daughter was known as Mrs. Colonel Cator.

If I may trespass for a few moments longer on the time which might be better occupied by others, I will venture to cross the Channel, and allude to one or two pleasant experiences in France.

It is a matter of interest, both historical and artistic, to make note of any portraits of Washington which have not before been described, or perhaps known to exist. During my late absence, I passed two delightful days with our Honorary Member, the Marquis de Rochambeau, at his chateau, near Vendôme. In one of his salons I found many relics of the old Marquis, or Count, as he then was, of Yorktown memory. The sword which he wore in America, his badge as an honorary member of the Cincinnati, his baton as a Marshal