and made it fire-proof, and in one year more it expects to pay off the remainder of the debt (over $60,000) incurred in its purchase and improvement.

To his thoughtful suggestion is directly owing George Peabody's generous gift of twenty thousand dollars. The Dowse Library and fund for its equipment are also a most memorable feature in the Society's history during his Presidency. To his devoted effort and untiring zeal more than to any other, or to all causes combined, is owing the growth of the Society in usefulness and in reputation. During the thirty years of his Presidency it may truly be said that Mr. Winthrop has ever carried the Society with him both at home and abroad; and it is needless to add that nowhere has it failed to be adequately represented.

Your Committee, therefore, does not consider that it would be fitting or proper that so long and distinguished a term of service, to which so much is owed, should come to an end unmarked. Various means of commemorating it have been thought of. But among these, none has so much commended itself to the judgment of your Committee as a suggestion from some of the more active members, that a full-length portrait of Mr. Winthrop should be obtained,-the gift of individuals, but to which all members of the Society would be at liberty to contribute, and should be placed in the rooms of the Society with a suitable inscription.

No formal action is called for to bring this about. It is understood that in accordance with the suggestion now made, a committee of members will be formed, who will take the matter in charge. This course will doubtless be most agreeable to Mr. Winthrop, as being the voluntary and spontaneous act of those composing the Society over which he has for so many years presided. It will best mark, too, the esteem in which the donors hold him, and the personal affection which they will always feel towards him.

All of which is respectfully submitted,

CHARLES F. ADAMS, JR.,

The officers named above were then elected for the ensuing

year.

The thanks of the Society were voted to Messrs. Hill and Adams, the retiring members of the Council, for their services.

Dr. ELLIS, on taking the chair, then said:

I must gratefully recognize my high appreciation of the honor of being placed in the chair of this Society, the oldest of the now numerous associations of the class in our country, lacking but six years to complete a century. The honor is twofold: first, in the place assigned me; and second, in being the successor in it of one who has for thirty years filled the chair with such grace and dignity, such wealth of attainments and accomplishments. Happily, we are not to feel that we have parted with him; remembering the venerable years with which his predecessor continued with us after his retirement from our Presidency.

There are living now only ten of his associates of this Society who welcomed Mr. Winthrop to this chair. But I speak for you all, especially for those longest in membership, when I say of him, present or absent, that our respect for his character, our estimate of his talents and gifts, our admiration of his full and rich culture, his stores of knowledge, his eloquence of utterance, and of his exquisite courtesy in his office, have drawn to him our profoundest esteem, and, I may add, our personal affection.

After the manner of speech of our fathers, speech which carried with it reverent faith,- we might well say that Mr. Winthrop has been a Providential President for us. His name and lineage are largely suggestive of the intent of this Society, to trace the springs and course of the history of Massachusetts. Of equal value with our charter, is deposited in our Cabinet the autograph Journal of John Winthrop, the founder of this city and common wealth. Begun in Old England, continued on the high seas, and closed in a wilderness scene within a stone's cast from where we are now gathered, that precious record of twenty years of exile tells us what we would most wish to know, and are told nowhere else, of our beginnings. Honor and veneration from the first and onward attach to that name, now fitly borne by a town, a church, a schoolhouse, a street, and a public square near us, and commemorated by the oldest portrait in our Senate-chamber, and

by statues in the highway, the Chapel of our garden Cemetery and at the Capitol of the nation.

I had been in membership of this Society many years before Mr. Winthrop's accession to the Presidency, and can well recall the forms- I shrink from saying how many of those, honored among us, who have vanished one by one. Rather would I sum together the auspicious and the fruitful incidents and events which during the last thirty years have so invigorated and enriched the life and activity of this Society. Soon after Mr. Winthrop acceded to the chair, a change in our charter extended the limit of our membership from sixty to one hundred, and another change empowered us to hold an increased amount of property. This building, also, thoroughly reconstructed for convenience and security, has nearly come under our sole ownership, with a valuable rental for a part of it from the county. The acquisition of this rich and unique Dowse Library, with its furnishings and its fund, was gratefully welcomed by us, as well it might be. Our largest pecuniary endowment has come to us from George Peabody; and that we owe, hardly indirectly, to Mr. Winthrop, to and for whom, after good advice and counsel in the direction of his vast munificence, Mr. Peabody paid this personal tribute, under the guise of a donation to us. Had not Mr. Winthrop been our President, Mr. Peabody had not been our benefactor. Again, there came to the light, almost from oblivion, in Connecticut, a quarter of a century ago, a large mass of papers of the Winthrop family, for nearly six generations, and of nearly two hundred years' accretion, beginning with those of our first Governor's grandfather in England. Many of these papers are of the highest value, and most of them have a curious interest. Beside Winthrop Papers earlier scattered through all our Collections, this treasure-trove has already since furnished, without by any means being exhausted, the contents of four of our solid volumes. The publication of the Proceedings of our monthly meetings was first prompted by Mr. Winthrop, involving much labor for our faithful workers. The twenty-first volume in that series is distributed among us to-day. Seventeen volumes of our Collections, and one of a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, have been added to our Publications. Many other generous funds, a large increase of the treasures on our shelves

and in our Cabinet, and a general renewal, refreshing and vitalizing, of all the interests and operations of the Society, have signalized the period of Mr. Winthrop's Presidency. And what works or words wiser and more valuable than his own have been done and spoken here! We have all profited by the gatherings from his frequent visits to Europe; his social relations with eminent statesmen and scholars, of whom he has made instructive and eloquent memorials to us; and his felicitous tributes, discriminating and discerning, to many of the distinguished good and wise and serviceable, who have passed from our own fellowship. Nor can we leave unmentioned the beautiful and graceful hospitality of his which we have shared in town and country.

I have held, and may have ventured to express, the conviction that in the near or distant future the term of Mr. Winthrop's Presidency may be referred to as a golden period in the records of this Society, for its full harmony, its healthful prosperity, and for the good work accomplished. Henceforward, more and more, it should be a prime object for those in its limited membership, to reinforce it by inviting to it men, young or mature, with acquisitions and trained intelligence, with congenial tastes, and, whatever the profession or taskwork which engages them, with a degree of leisure to be spent in these rooms and with these materials.

Mr. WINTHROP then rose, and after the applause which greeted him had subsided, spoke with much feeling as follows:

You have quite overcome me, Mr. President and Gentlemen, by the tributes which have just been paid me. I can find no words for any adequate acknowledgment of them. It could not be without emotion that I came here this morning to take the chair for the last time, after a service of thirty years as your President. But I dare not trust myself to attempt an expression of the feelings which the occasion has awakened. I can only offer my sincere thanks to the Executive Committee, and the Nominating Committee, and to yourself, Mr. President, for the kind and complimentary terms in which you have spoken of me, and of which I shall ever cherish a most grateful remembrance.

I look back, over nearly forty-six years, to the time when I first became a member of this Society, and find not one left of those with whom I was then so proud to be associated. Among them were the fathers or the grandfathers of not a few of those whom I am happy to recognize around me at this moment, — John Quincy Adams and Josiah Quincy, Leverett Saltonstall and Samuel Hoar, Edward Everett and Nathan Hale, Judge White and Dr. Alexander Young,not forgetting my own honored father, who was then our President.

Even of those who were members when I entered upon the Presidency thirty years ago, only ten, as you have said, or twelve at the most, are still among the living. I look in vain for that remarkable group of historians and men of letters by whom I have been so often surrounded in former years, Prescott and Sparks and Everett and Ticknor and Motley and Longfellow and Hillard and Emerson. Many of our most efficient workers of those days are gone too,- George Livermore and Chandler Robbins and Dr. Shurtleff and Richard Frothingham, - to whom I have owed not a little of the satisfaction and success of my administration, and to whose memory I gladly pay this passing homage.

But I will not dwell longer on the past. We have Holmes and Parkman here with us, — and Dr. Peabody and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Cabot Lodge- to name no others; while with Dr. Ellis and Dr. Deane and Mr. Smith and Mr. Winsor and Dr. Green in immediate charge of our Proceedings, and with a devoted Secretary to record them, our Society can lose nothing of its character or its usefulness. It will close its first century, and enter on its second century, as you have reminded us, six years hence, with no diminished claims, I am assured, to the confidence and grateful recognition of all who take an interest in Historical pursuits; while it can never lose its prestige as the oldest Historical Society in our country.

Let me only say, in conclusion, that I rejoice that, in taking leave of the Presidency, I am by no means taking leave of the Society. Not only will my name retain its place, as long as a kind Providence shall still spare my life, at the head of your roll, as the senior member in the order of election, but I hope to be no rare or infrequent attendant at your meetings, and