reign of Edward IV., to have become her successor between 1490 and 1500. Catherine had an only daughter of the same name as her own, who was the wife of Philip Barry Oge.

Another instance of longevity was alluded to by Mr. Amory, that of the father of the first President of the Society, Governor Sullivan, who lived to the age of one hundred and five, as stated by his son in the obituary notice of him, as also on his tombstone at Berwick. He enjoyed very perfect health throughout his long life, retaining his faculties to its close. If we may credit genealogists, he was of the same stock by female lines as the Countess of Desmond.

JULY MEETING, 1873.

A stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 10th instant, at eleven o'clock, A.M.; the President in the chair.

The Secretary read the records of the previous meeting. The Librarian read his list of donors to the Library for the past month.

The President then said:

We have a number of more than commonly interesting gifts to acknowledge to-day. Here is a number of Addison's Spectator, No. CXL., bearing date, Friday, August 10, 1711. It was sent to us by Mr. Thomas Groom, the well-known stationer, who thought it might be of the original impression, as there is every reason to think it is. But, however that may be, we would return him our grateful acknowledgments for the gift.

Here are two large volumes which have been sent to our Library from Mrs. William Winthrop, of Malta, the widow of our late Corresponding Member, who not only added a large number of books to our Library during his lifetime, but provided by his will for the prospective establishment of a Binding Fund of $3,000.

One of these volumes is the "History of the Recent Discoveries at Cyrene, made during an expedition to the Cyrenaica, in 1860-61, under the auspices of Her Majesty's government, by Captain R. Murdoch Sinith, R. E., and Commander E. A. Porcher, R. N." 1 vol. 4to. London, 1864. A presentation copy to W. Winthrop, from E. A. Porcher.

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

[JULY,

The other is a manuscript" History of Christian and Moslem Slavery, with Historical Sketches of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. In the Holy Land, Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta. By William Winthrop, United States Consul at Malta." Water-color illustrations, by E. A. Porcher, R. N. 1 vol. Fol. MSS. It may prove that parts, if not the whole of this work, may be found worthy of publication, whenever our funds will admit of such an expenditure, or possibly some publisher may be inclined to print it. At any rate, you would not pardon me for omitting to return our grateful acknowledgments for the volumes.

Here, finally, is a parcel, which will best be explained by the note which accompanied it, from our valued associate, Mr. William Amory:

Hon. ROBT. C. WINTHROP,

President of Massachusetts Historical Society.

DEAR SIR, - Allow me to offer through you, to your Society, the accompanying autograph manuscript of some pages of the "Conquest of Mexico," by the distinguished author of that work, the late William H. Prescott. It was written by the aid of the noctograph, also herewith presented, and which, as you know, the state of his sight compelled him almost always to use in writing, somewhat at the expense of the legibility and appearance of the manuscript itself. Both, I thought, might be valuable as a literary curiosity, and interesting as a souvenir of so beloved an associate, and so eminent an historian. descriptive of the noctograph, and the manner of using it, from the An extract admirable Biography of Mr. Prescott, by his faithful friend, Mr. Ticknor, is also enclosed; and if you will deposit the whole, at my expense, in some suitable case, as you proposed, in the Library of your Society, you will greatly oblige

NAHANT, June 17, 1873.

Yours, very respectfully and truly,

W. AMORY.

Nothing could be more interesting than the Noctograph of Prescott, and happily Mr. Amory is present to witness the gratification with which it is received.

The President continued:

During the absence from home last month, which prevented my being present at our June Meeting, I passed a week in Canandaigua, at the mansion of the venerable Mrs. Greig, the widow of the late Hon. John Greig, with whom I had served in Congress, in 1841, and whose most striking resemblance to Walter Scott would have rendered him remarkable, quite apart from his ability, his sterling integrity, and his generous hospitality. On visiting the Court House in the village, I found on

the walls a large number of portraits, which included almost all those who had been prominently associated with the Ontario County Bar, as well as many of the most distinguished early settlers and residents of Western New York, from the days when our own Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham, the President of the old Confederation Congress in 1786, united with Oliver Phelps in making that great purchase which led to the settlement of the Genesee country.

There were portraits of Gorham and Phelps; of Howell and Spencer, two eminent judges of New York; of the elder James, and of General William Wadsworth; of the late General Peter B. Porter and of John C. Spencer, both remembered as Secretaries of War of the United States; of Gideon Granger and his son, the late Francis Granger, both Postmaster-Generals of the United States; of the late Daniel D. Barnard, and Mark H. Sibley, and Stephen A. Douglas, all distinguished in the annals of Congress; of Abner Barlow, who sowed the first wheat in that region; of William Wood, a native of Massachusetts, known as the founder of the earliest Mercantile Library Association in our country; of Mr. Greig himself, and of many others whose names are more familiar in that part of the country than in

our own.

Happening to inquire whether there was any portrait of General Chapin, the old Indian Commissioner of Washington's appointment, who had been associated with General Benjamin Lincoln and Colonel Timothy Pickering, in the negotiation of a memorable Indian treaty at Canandaigua, and, I may add, of whose venerable grand-daughter (Mrs. Greig) I was the guest, I was told that there was no likeness of him extant. I replied, that I thought I had somewhere seen one, and that on my return home I would see if my impression was correct. I had in my mind a lithographed sketch of a conference with the Indians of Western New York, contained in the 5th vol. of the 3d Series of our Collections. That sketch had been impressed on my memory by the earnestness and emphasis with which our late venerable Senior Member, President Quincy, had alluded to it in my presence. I have heard him more than once speak of it, with the volume in his hand, as the most striking sketch of the sort he had ever seen. The character of the Indians, he thought, wonderfully well given, and the likenesses of Pickering and Lincoln admirable.

On turning to that sketch, I found a full-length figure of General Chapin, which is believed to be as good a likeness as the others, and of which I at once secured a copy, with the volume containing it, and sent it to Canandaigua.

I have told the story not merely as illustrating the somewhat striking way in which our old volumes may sometimes be turned to account, but also to bring this remarkable sketch to the fresh notice of the Society. It was made on the spot, as it seems, by a young British officer who was present at the" Talk in 1793, was given by him (then Colonel Pilkington) to a friend in Gibraltar in 1819, and accidentally came into the hands of a member of our Society only a few weeks before General Lincoln's journal of the transaction was ready for publication.

I desired also to have an inquiry instituted as to the original sketch. Where is it? Can it not still be discovered in our archives, or traced to its possessor? President Quincy often suggested that the picture ought to be perpetuated on canvas. But the original sketch would be a most interesting addition to our gallery, and I hope it may be sought for and found.

Professor William Gammell, LL.D., of Providence, was elected a Corresponding Member.

Mr. ELLIS AMES communicated the following new facts respecting the Rev. Benjamin Bunker, of the class of 1658, which Mr. Sibley had not incorporated in his recent history of Harvard graduates:

Records of the Town of Bridgewater, Mass., Vol. I. page 24.

It is ordered and Agreed upon by the towne of Bridgewater freely and willingly to give unto Mr. Buncker, if he shall come hether to supply our wants in the way of the ministrey, the sum of thirty pounds, or twenty pounds and his Diet.

It is ordered and Agreed upon by the towne, that A Leve should be Raised for the sum of fourteen pounds, upon every man's estate, which is the one-halfe of the sume which the town promised to Mr. Bunker for his carriing Along of the Lord's Day's Exercise, and his Diet, and also it is ordered that they that are not willing to be rated, that they may chuse whether they will pay according to their rate, but pay what they have promised, and that those that are willing to be rated if they want any thing or part of the same to be made up, that they are to make it up. This was concluded upon the eleventh of January, 1660. It is Inacted by the Towne the 22d of february, 1660, that a leve should be made for the sume of five and twenty pounds upon every man's estate, which is what they promised to Mr. Bunker for the carriing Along of the Lord's days Exercise and his diet before his time or his year is fully expyred.

Mr. Daniel MacGregor, of East Derry, N. H., presented a copy of an engraving of "Ye great Town of Boston, in New England," for which acknowledgments were ordered.

AUGUST MEETING, 1873.

A stated meeting was held on Thursday the 15th instant, at 11 o'clock, A.M.; the President, Mr. WINTHROP, in the chair. The Recording Secretary read the record of the preceding meeting.

The Librarian read the list of donors to the Library for the past month.

The President spoke of the death of Bishop Wilberforce, an Honorary Member of the Society, as follows:

The Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., whose name has been on our foreign Honorary Roll since August, 1855, met with a fatal accident on the 19th of July last, near London. A more sudden removal from the highest associations of earth has rarely been deplored. The stumbling of a horse, on which he was riding in company with Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on their way to meet the Prime Minister of England, brought his busy and brilliant career to a close. Unlike the late Sir Robert Peel, who was the victim of a similar accident in 1850, he was spared from any lingering agonies, expiring without a struggle on the spot, and at the instant, of his fall.

Born on the 7th of September, 1805, he had hardly completed his sixty-eighth year, while his health and strength seemed to promise many more years of usefulness and honor. He was a younger son of that renowned Philanthropist and Christian Statesman, William Wilberforce, whose deserved celebrity was wide enough and enduring enough to distinguish a whole family for a dozen generations. But he early extricated himself from the often oppressive shadow of a great paternal or ancestral name, and asserted his individual title to a place both in the ecclesiastical and the civil history of his country. Indeed, few prelates of the English Church, in our own day or in any day, have taken a more conspicuous stand, or enjoyed a wider distinction.

Nominated by Sir Robert Peel to the Bishopric of Oxford when hardly forty years of age, he became at once a notable figure in the House of Lords, as well as in the Convocations of the Church. Industrious, devoted, accomplished, with a rare facility and felicity of diction, he turned himself with marvellous versatility to every sphere of public service, and was