his classmates were proud of him. A popularity earned by merit, not purchased by blandishments, caused him to be selected as the orator of the class.

Having graduated with high honors, he entered upon the study of his profession in one of the higher schools attached to the University, while some of his classmates were connected with another. I well remember that, among his fellow-students and instructors there, he secured the same respect which he had already won in the College. The saying of Mr. Justice Story, then at the head of the Law School, which some of you may have heard, did not surprise us in the least at the time it was uttered: "I should like to live long enough to see with my own eyes what eminence my pupils, Curtis and Sumner, will attain."

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Our intercourse, which by reason of his devotion to his professional duties and long absences from Boston, had been less frequent during the middle period of his life, became, as I have said, more confidential towards its close; and, while my respect was not diminished, my affection and sympathy continually increased. I saw that the experience and discipline of life as is the case with all wise men had mellowed and enriched his heart and deepened his religious sentiments. The warmer, gentler, lovelier qualities of his nature, were constantly gaining the ascendency, and adding new charms to his domestic and social life. The last conversations he held with me were upon the most sacred themes, - providence and prayer, and the divine character and teachings of Christ. In all the precious doctrines of the Christian creed he declared his unquestioning belief. He spoke with tearful emotion of his personal obligation to the Son of God for light and comfort, and the assurance of immortality. "I count his Word," he said, "a sure and sufficient authority. I know it can never be controverted." These words were upon his lips as, after a short walk, we shook hands for the last time, just before he removed to Newport for the summer. They imprinted themselves upon my memory. They proved that he had attained to the best result of life. They crown and consecrate his image in my heart.

The Resolutions were unanimously adopted.

The Recording Secretary read the following letters from the President, in which reference is made to the death of our associate, Mr. B. R. Curtis, and to that of M. Guizot, an Honorary Member. His unavoidable detention in Europe beyond the time contemplated for his return, owing to the continued illness

of a member of his family, is also announced in one of the letters:

MILAN, 15 September, 1874.

DEAR MR. DEANE, I begin another letter here, though where I shall end it remains to be seen. Yours of the 18th ult. was most welcome, as assuring me of your having received my various July letters. I trust that those of August may have reached you also, and particularly that about the portrait of Washington. . . We came over the Simplon to Lago Maggiore, and then here to rest. We go back to Como to-day, and over the Splügen before Sunday, and then rest again before keeping along to Paris. Yesterday I spent an hour or so in the Ambrosian Library, where, besides a palimpsest of one of Cicero's Orations, and the rare copy of "Boccace," the librarian showed me what he insisted on was an absolutely unique copy of the first letter of Columbus, on parchment, I think. He spoke of our friend Lenox, and of John Carter Brown, of whose death he had not heard. I afterwards ran down by rail to Pavia, and saw the outside of the University at which Columbus was educated; and, of course, visited the marvellous Monastery of Certosa, said to be the most splendid ecclesiastical edifice of that sort in the world. The church and chapels were magnificently adorned with every thing which gold and silver, and precious stones, and marble and ivory, and painting and sculpture, could supply. By the bye, while at Stuttgart, ten days ago, I visited the Library, and thought of good George Livermore, as I looked at the ten thousand Bibles, in one of which I saw Martin Luther's writing. I inquired whether they had John Eliot's Indian Bible among them, but the servitor knew nothing about it. It may be there notwithstanding, and, certainly, ought to be. I did not fall in with the responsible librarian, who would have been able to tell me. . . The most important thing I have done here is to come at last, and most reluctantly, to a decision that I cannot be at home this winter. It is a grief to me on many accounts, and I have hoped against hope as long as I could. . . .

I am sorry to miss the Annual Meeting of the Peabody Trustees; sorry to miss my Provident Association and my relations to the poor; and sorry to be obliged to decline the centennial distinctions of our Revolutionary anniversaries. But not less than any, or all these, I lament my separation from our Society for so long a period. On this point I shall add more either in this letter or my next.

Cadenabbia, on Lake Como, 16th Sept. We came here last evening, and go along to-morrow. We are at a lovely point of the lake, opposite to Bellagio, the long line of whose lamps on the shores. last night gave me a reminiscence of our Milldam or Beacon Street range, and made me wish that I was just passing them on my way to Brookline. A little, and more than a little, "home-sickness" steals over me, even amid the most beautiful scenes of Europe.

Since reaching here, I have observed the announcement of the death of M. Guizot, at eighty-seven. Few more remarkable statesmen or men of letters have died in our day. He worked to the last with

wonderful vigor. Among the very latest things which I read before leaving home were some of the early chapters of his recent History of France. It was undertaken for his grandchildren, I believe, and was originally designed as a child's history. But all that I read was elaborate and eloquent, replete with brilliant illustrations and profound philosophical thought. He sent us, you remember, a set of his works, so far as then collected, when we made him one of our Honorary Members, twenty years ago. But none of them will be so memorable as this last production of his old age. His little Memoir of Washington, which our friend Hillard translated so finely for the American press, commended him specially to the regard and respect of Americans. A portrait of him was in the National Gallery in Washington, while I was in public service there, which, if I remember right, was ordered by Congress. At any rate, it belonged to the nation. When I was in Europe, fifteen or sixteen years ago, Everett gave me a note of introduction to him; and I had more than one delightful interview with him. Mr. Ticknor, as well as Mr. Everett, was intimate with him. Standing, as he did, at the head of our honorary roll, his death will, doubtless, be noticed at our October meeting, and I would gladly have paid my little tribute to the many great elements of his career and character. I observe that he requested that no invitations should be issued for his funeral, and no eulogies pronounced at his grave. He lived and died an earnest Protestant, and was associated prominently with the cause of circulating the Bible and promoting religious and charitable institutions in France.

I had intended writing on other topics, but my paper is filled up, and I leave every thing else to another time. Remember me to Hillard, and tell him I have thought much of the Class of 1828, since hearing of the death of our friend, Francis C. Loring, for whom I had a warm regard. Yours sincerely,

C. DEANE, Esq.

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

LUCERNE, SWITZERLAND, 22 September, 1874. DEAR MR. DEANE, The enclosed note from Mr. Vernon Heath* is very satisfactory, and should be filed among the "muniments" of

43 PICCADILLY, 15th September, 1874.

DEAR SIR, I have been away from London for some time, but I left, previous to my going, all the necessary instructions about the Washington picture. We had some trouble about the frame, but in the end succeeded in making one which is an absolute fac-simile of the original, and all is now ready; and the picture, in its case, will leave for America to-night.

When I have the whole of the charges, I will write to you.

All I can now say is, that now that the picture is finished complete, it really looks so like the original that I constantly feel that it is the original that is before me.

In a year, but not in less time, it will need varnishing; but it will be so much to the advantage of the picture if the varnishing is delayed till then.

I am, dear Sir,

Yours truly,

ROBT. C. WINTHROP, Esq.

VERNON HEATH.

our copy of the portrait of Washington. You will observe what he says about the varnishing. Let the attention of our Committee be called to this passage. I trust the portrait will now be forthcoming almost as soon as this letter.

At a little inn, last Friday, when I was half-way over the Splügen Pass, I found a "London Times," of a day or two only previous, and, among the telegrams from the United States, the death of our associate, Judge Curtis, was announced. As a lawyer, he has hardly left his peer in our whole country. He was an excellent man, too, whom we can ill afford to lose, either from the circle of private friendship, or of public counsel. The death of such a man- so ripe, so practised, accomplished—is a great calamity. I know not where we are to find the men to fill the places in our community, to say nothing of our Society, which are being vacated so rapidly.

so

I write in haste, and in the hope that the enclosed note of Mr. Heath may be in season for the arrival of the portrait. Yours ever sincerely,

CHAS. DEANE, Esq.

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

The Secretary also communicated the following paper from the pen of a Corresponding Member, Richard Henry Major, F.S.A., which is explained in a letter previously received from Mr. Winthrop, dated Wildbad, Würtemberg, 22 August, 1874. "While I was in Londen," he says, "I spent an hour or two as I believe I have already told you-at the British Museum, in conversation with our Corresponding Member, Mr. Major, on the subject of his recent researches into the pre-historic voyages to America (if I may so speak). I assured him that our Society would be most glad to have a communication from him, giving a little résumé of the results at which he had arrived. Since I wrote you last I have received an interesting paper from him, On the Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Zeno to the Northern Seas, in the Fourteenth Century.' I have read it cursorily, and have, fortunately, found a private hand for sending it across the Atlantic. It will reach you safely, I trust, about a month hence, certainly in time for our October meeting." A note from Mr. Major to Mr. Winthrop, dated British Museum, August 6, 1874, accompanied the above letter, in which Mr. Major says: "Herewith I have the pleasure to send you the fulfilment of your request, and of my promise."

On the Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Zeno, to the Northern Seas, in the Fourteenth Century.

BY R. H. MAJOR, F.S.A.

In this utilitarian age, it may, at first sight, appear to some that the geography transmitted to us from ages long gone by is of no further use than to amuse the leisure moments of a dilettante; and, if it could be shown that all the valuable researches of the past had been duly recognized and incorporated into the geography of to-day, such a supposition would be perfectly correct. It has, however, fallen to my own lot, amongst others, to give some practical proofs that such is not the case. By means of research, of analysis, comparison, and digestion, we have gained a knowledge, in these later days, of startling facts which held no place whatever in the minds or in the current literature of our immediate forefathers.

It is only recently that I have laid before the world the fact, that three hundred years ago the two great equatorial lakes, Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyanza, with their probable southern feeder, Lake Tanganyika, made known to us in recent years by our noble explorers, Burton and Speke and Grant and Sir Samuel Baker, were already laid down on a map from information gathered by a Portuguese during nine months' residence in Congo.

It is only recently that it has been shown that the east and west coasts of Australia were discovered and laid down on maps about the middle of the reign of Henry the VIII.; and it is only within the last two years that I have been able to show that those discoveries were, to all appearance, made by the men of Provence.

I might add the remarkable fact that, in the account published by the Hakluyt Society of Drake's circumnavigation of the world in 1578, in which he discovered California, and named it Nova Albion, we meet with these very notable words: "There is no part of earth here to bee taken up, wherein there is not some speciall likelihood of gold or silver;" and yet, as we know, the great discovery of gold in California, of which these words ought to have been the harbinger, was not made till 1848,- two hundred and seventy years later.

It is only comparatively recently that any satisfactory light has been thrown upon the colonization of America by northmen as far back as the very commencement of the present millennium; and it is only within the last twelvemonth that I have been able to demonstrate, in a volume which I edited for the Hakluyt Society, that, so late as a hundred years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the survivors of those colonists still existed in America, and were in the habit of importing from Greenland furs and brimstone and pitch, and, moreover, that a Venetian at that early period was in a position to send home a report of these facts to his fellow-citizens in Venice. It is upon this subject, so interesting to all Americans, that I propose now to say a few words. It is a subject which would have been matter of world