warm heart and an earnest, noble spirit. Deeply imbued with a scholarship and a learning which had rendered him familiar with the best productions both of ancient and modern literature, his acquisitions only served to give richness and variety to the illustration of topics of which his own heart and mind were full. He occupied himself with no elaborate disquisitions or abstruse philosophies, but poured forth from time to time, from a rich storehouse of memory or imagination, sometimes in prose and oftener of late in verse, such words and thoughts as befitted the hour or the occasion. His heart seemed always intent upon the events which he witnessed, and always in sympathy with the joys or sorrows of those around him.

He had the strongest appreciation for the beautiful and the noble, in every form in which they are manifested to the sense or the soul, in nature, in art, in music, in literature, in action, in character. It has happened to me to be with him in Rome, among the glorious remains of classic art; and in Switzerland, also, amid some of those wonderful scenes of pure, original, majestic nature. Frequently, too, some years ago, I have chanced to walk with him, at his favorite hour, and along his favorite path, across our own beautiful Common, towards the setting of an autumn sun. Everywhere he was filled with rapture for whatever was grandest or loveliest in the works of God or of man, and few men have known better how to give expression to such emotions. Not a few of his verses, whether original or translated, have lifted the hearts of hearers and readers, as they have lifted his own heart, in hours of trial or of devotion; and some of them cannot fail to have a permanent place in the occasional poetry, religious or secular, of our land.

I will not attempt to speak of the resignation and fortitude with which he bore the heavy load of personal deprivation and suffering, under which he has been withdrawn from us for some years past. It would seem, to any one who has been privileged to visit him during these days of darkness, as if he

must have caught the full spirit of a stanza of one of those inspiring German hymns, which he has translated with so much feeling and beauty:

Be brave, my heart! and weary

Grow never in the strife:
The peace of God will cheer ye

With trust and strength and life.
Be vigorous, not complaining,

And every effort bend:
This very day, at waning,

May see the conflict end."

Happily for him, the conflict has at last ended; and it only remains for us to do justice to his memory.

I am instructed by the Standing Committee to offer the following resolution:

Resolved, That in the death of the Rev. Nathaniel L. Frothingham, D.D., this Society has lost one of its most respected and accomplished Associates, and that the President be requested to appoint one of our number to prepare a Memoir of him for our volume of Proceedings.

The Resolution was seconded by Dr. WALKER, who said, MR. PRESIDENT,-In moving the adoption of the Resolution I feel that the remarks with which you have introduced it have left me but little to say.

Dr. Frothingham represents a class of clergymen more common formerly than now, who are at once clergymen and scholars, and who are drawn to the profession, in part at least, by the opportunity it affords for scholarship. He was, I suppose, more of a scholar than a theologian; though his scholarship was not without its effect on his professional studies, especially in matters of history and criticism. He loved books, and his mind was ever open to new truth, but he took comparatively little interest in new measures; indeed, he can hardly be said to have had a single quality of mind or heart fitting him to become a platform orator. I say not this to his dispraise. Meanwhile he was an example to us all in the faithfulness and painstaking with which he prepared himself,

week after week, for the pulpit, where his success would have been greater than it was except for the circumstance that many of his felicities of thought and expression could only be appreciated by scholars like himself.

Several of his hymns and other poems are not only exquisitely finished, but breathe a profoundly devotional spirit, and show that the author knew how to commune with God. In general society there was often a reserve upon him which some may have construed into coldness or indifference; but to his intimate friends his manner was singularly gentle and tender and affectionate. This made him very dear to them, and it makes his memory very dear to them.

Dr. LOTHROP also addressed the meeting, and the Resolution was unanimously adopted.

Dr. Hedge was appointed to prepare the Memoir of Dr. Frothingham for the Society's Proceedings.

The President presented a number of pamphlets from our Honorary Member, Count Circourt, containing articles written by him; namely, the numbers of the "Annales Franc-Comtoises," &c., for September and October, 1869, containing "Mémoires de Jules Chiflet, Abbé de Balerne"; the "Bibliothèque Universelle et Revue Suisse" for April, 1868, and July, 1869; the former containing an article entitled "Le Journal d'une Reine," being a notice of "Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861, edited by Arthur Helps. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1868"; the latter containing a review of a work entitled "Marie-Antoinette, Reine de France, par James de Chambrier, 2 vols. in 8vo. Neuchâtel, London, et Paris, Hachette, 1868"; and a pamphlet entitled "La Confédération Suisse. Paris: Charles Dounoil, Libraire-Editeur, 29 Rue Tournon, 1870." The President was requested to acknowledge the above.

The President also presented the Prospectus of the "Codex Diplomaticus Cavensis," a publication proposed to be made of one of the treasures of the monastery of La Cava, one of "the

once mighty and still splendid monasteries of the kingdom of Naples." The Prospectus was transmitted by Count Circourt, who says of these monasteries: "They have been threatened with dissolution; but, upon the unanimous voice of the literary world (Dean Stanley has been most active for their preservation), they have been spared, — not, indeed, as convents, but as repositories of the national archives and as literary institutions. Now, they do endeavor to publish the inedited and almost infinite riches of their archives. Nothing in the shape of ecclesiastical and canonic matters: the whole relates to the civil rights, the legislation (especially of the Lombard principalities), the general and provincial history, the commercial relations and connections with the Mussulman world during the Middle Ages. In a word, the mere reading of the Prospectus will convince you that no publication could be of more use to students than this one; but the editors must be helped. I wish greatly that, through your kind mediation, some of the great literary establishments of your country would subscribe to the Codex Cavensis. America has, of late, done wonders in founding universities and collecting libraries few better occasions can occur for enriching these recent and already opulent collections."

The President also read a letter from Mrs. Jules Marcou, of Paris, a grand-daughter of Dr. Jeremy Belknap, addressed to our Associate Mr. Ticknor, in which she speaks of an article in the Boston "Daily Advertiser" of the 12th of March last, on the subject of the "Boston Massacre," so called. In this article reference is made to the testimony of one Jeremiah Belknap, supposed by the writer to be the historian of that name, as to what was witnessed by him on that fatal evening of the 5th of March. Mrs. Marcou desired to correct this statement, saying that Dr. Belknap at this time was a settled minister at Dover, and that the person referred to was an uncle of the historian.

Mr. Deane read a letter from Judge Henry F. French, of

Concord, Mass., communicating the article referred to by Mrs. Marcou, of which he was the writer. In the article, mention is made of a William Merchant, one of the young men who was present at the affray on the evening of the 5th of March, as being of a well-known family in Boston, and as having descendants of great respectability, among whom was the wife of Judge French. A portrait of Merchant, painted in 1755-the family tradition says, by Copley - when the subject of it was a child, at the age of five years, is in the possession of Judge French.*

The President, referring to a discussion before the Society a few years since, as to whether persons said to have attained the age of one hundred years were really so old as alleged, read an account from the "New York Observer" of March 17th, of a banquet given on the 9th of March by General J. Watts De Peyster, of that city, to Captain F. Lahrbush, in honor of his one hundred and fifth birthday. General de Peyster gave a sketch of this wonderful man. The "Observer" says,

"He was born in England, March 9th, 1766. At the age of twenty-three he entered the British army. He was with Lord Nelson when Copenhagen was taken; he was in the battle of Jena; he saw the famous interview between Napoleon and Alexander, in 1807, at Tilsit, on the raft; he was shot in the leg at Valencia, in 1808; he was on the field at Corunna, where Sir John Moore was killed. At the battle of Busaco, in 1810, he was wounded in the head and left for dead on the battle-field. Afterwards he was in the army in South Africa, and for three months was one of the British guard over Napoleon, at St. Helena. In 1818, at the age of fifty-two, he sold out his commission in the army, and travelled extensively

A second article written by Judge French, giving more full details of the genealogy of the Merchant family, appeared in the "Daily Advertiser" (Supplement) of May 12. In this he shows that the portrait was probably painted two years later than the date given above, the subject of it having been born April 13, 1752. The error detected by Mrs. Marcou, as to the identity of the Jeremiah Belknap mentioned in the former communication, is also corrected. - EDS.