nent, via Gaudaloupe, that the Austrian army are in possession of Paris, and that they have reinstated the king, &c.

Nov. 2. Sunday. Strolled in the Mall to enjoy the delightful elasticity of the air. Met several gentlemen of my acquaintance there. Dined with T. H. Perkins, and attended church with him in the afternoon, and heard Mr. Belknap deliver an old-fashioned sermon that I doubt not was Orthodox to a tittle.

Nov. 3. This is the day of election here for Federal Representatives. The principal contest seemed to be between Fisher Ames, Esq., an accomplished lawyer, who is a member of the present Congress, who has given sufficient proofs of his being a staunch Federalist, and Benjamin Austin, Jr., Esq., a Democratic enragée, who has long been known as an instigator and patron of faction in this town. Every staunch friend to the Federal Government will rejoice to find that Mr. Ames carried it by a majority of over forty votes.

Went to dine with an old acquaintance and worthy man, Mr. Joseph May, agreeably to appointment. Met T. H. Perkins there.

Nov. 6. Rumor from France, via Portland, that another tumult has taken place in Paris, where 11,000 persons have been massacred at the instigation of the Jacobin faction.

We went to Aspinwall's Hospital to visit the intended bride of Mr. Cragie, Miss Shaw, who is now under the operation of the small-pox by inoculation.

Called at Mr. William Foster's, and took tea with the family.

Nov. 14. Dined with the Marine Society by invitation of Mr. Thomas Dennie, at the Bunch of Grapes tavern; we had good cheer and were merry. Thanksgiving Day, as this is called in consequence of the Governor's proclamation, causes a deal of fuss among the good people of this Commonwealth. What between the ostensible compliments they pay to God in the different edifices dedicated to him, the preparation of the good things of this life, and the amusement of eating themselves into an indigestion, or hampering themselves out of breath, they are more occupied on this day than on any other in the year.

Nov. 30. Dined by appointment with my cousin, Mr. P. C. Brooks, who is recently married to a daughter of the Hon. Nath'l Gorham, Esq., of Charlestown, in this vicinity.

Dec. 21. This forenoon attended a town meeting at Faneuil Hall, the principal occasion of which was to discuss the question of a remonstrance to the General Court respecting the statute which prohibits theatrical entertainments in this Commonwealth. Joseph Blake, Jun., Esq., made the only systematic speech which was pronounced on the occasion. For the question had been so thoroughly discussed last year in the same place that no debate took place. With the utmost good order and regularity a committee was chosen to bring in a form of a remonstrance to the General Court. On the show of hands, there did not appear but one dissentient, who was a leather dresser, in this town, I think by the name of Adams. A French gentleman who was present professed his astonishment at the perfect order that existed in this popular assembly.

Dec. 24. Mr. Ben. Russell informed me he had recently a letter from Benj. Hitchborne, Esq., of this town, dated in Dublin, which informs him that the King of Prussia has expressed his intention of seceding from the Austrian party and forming some new arrangement with the new Republic of France, and that his forces had actually raised the seige of Lisle.

Jan. 1, 1793. Took my departure for New York. On my way met my friends, L. V. Boland and James Lloyd, bound to Boston.

ANNUAL MEETING, APRIL, 1871.

The Annual Meeting was held on Thursday, the 13th of April, at eleven o'clock, A.M.; the President, the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, in the chair.

The records of the preceding Monthly Meeting and of the Special Meeting were read.

The Librarian read his monthly list of donors to the Library. The Cabinet-keeper reported the gift of the portrait of the late James F. Baldwin, painted by George P. A. Healey, — from Mrs. Baldwin.

The Corresponding Secretary read a letter from our Corresponding Member, Thomas B. Akins, Esq., of Halifax, N. S., advising that he had sent to the Society's Library five volumes of the Journal and Proceedings of the House of Assembly of the Province of Nova Scotia," and of " Her Majesty's Legis lative Council" of that Province.

66

The President noticed gifts to the Library from our asso ciates; viz., "The Life of Count Rumford," from the author, the Rev. George E. Ellis; "The Proceedings of the Celebration at Plymouth, 21st December, 1870," from the compiler, the Hon. William T. Davis, who also presented a volume of old tracts; and "A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston," from the author, Dr. Shurtleff.

Suitable acknowledgments were ordered for these several gifts.

The President called attention to a new volume of Proceed ings, placed upon the table this morning, embracing extracts from the doings of the Society, from April, 1869, to December, 1870, inclusive. Whereupon it was

Voted, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Recording Secretary, and his assistants of the Publishing Com

mittee, Messrs. Green and Smith, for the acceptable services rendered in the preparation of this volume.

An application from the Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, of Boston, for leave to copy that portion of the Dunster manuscript (presented to the Society by the President, at the January meeting in 1867) which gives an account of a Conference of Ministers in 1653-4 on the subject of Infant Baptism, was granted under the rules.

William Amory, Esq., of Boston, was elected a Resident Member.

Judge WARREN read the following portion of a letter from his grandfather, James Warren, written the day after the battle of Bunker Hill, addressed to his wife, the sister of James Otis :

Extract of a Letter from James Warren to his Wife.

WATERTOWN, June 18, 1775. MY DEAR MERCY, The extraordinary nature of the events which have taken place in the last forty-eight hours has interrupted that steady and only intercourse which the situation of public affairs allows

me.

The night before last our troops possessed themselves of a hill in Charlestown, and had time only to throw up an imperfect breastwork. The regular troops from the batteries in Boston, and two men-of-war in the ferry-way, began early next morning a heavy fire on them, which was continued till about noon, when they landed a large number of troops, and, after a stout resistance and great loss on their side, dispossessed our men, who, with the accumulated disadvantages of being exposed to the fire of their cannon and the want of ammunition, and not being supported by any fresh troops, were obliged to abandon the town and retire to our lines towards Cambridge, to which they made a very handsome addition last night. With a savage barbarity never practised among civilized nations they fired and have utterly destroyed the town of Charlestown.

We have had this day at dinner another alarm, that they were advancing on our lines, after having reinforced their horse, &c.; and that they were out at Roxbury. We expected this would have been an important day. They are reinforced, but have not advanced. So things remain at present. We have killed for them many men, and have [of our own] killed or wounded about an hundred, by the best accounts I can get. Among the first of which, to our inexpressible grief, is my friend Dr. Warren, who was killed, it is supposed, in the lines on the Hill at Charlestown, in a manner more glorious to himself than the fate of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham. Many other officers are wounded, and some killed. It is impossible to describe the confusion in this place, women and children flying into the country, armed men going to the field, and wounded men returning from there fill the streets. I shan't attempt a description.

Your brother borrowed a gun, &c., and went among the flying bullets at Charlestown, and returned last evening at 10 o'clock. The Librarian got a slight wound with a musket ball in his head.

The Continental Congress have done and are doing all we could wish. Dr. Church returned last evening, and brought resolutions for assuming government and for supplying provisions and powder, and he tells us, though under the rose, that they are contemplating and have perhaps finished the establishment of the army and an emission of money to pay and support them, and he thinks the operations of yesterday will be more than sufficient to induce them to recommend the assumption of new forms of government to all the Colonies. The mode of government prescribed is according to the last Charter. Some are quite satisfied with it. You know I wished a more perfect

one.

It is now Monday morning. I hear nothing yet but the roaring of cannon below, but nobody regards them.

Your afft. husband.

JAS. WARREN.*

The President stated that the Corresponding Secretary, Dr. Robbins, contemplated a visit to Europe, and intended, he believed, to sail the following week, to be absent some months. Whereupon it was unanimously

Voted, That the Corresponding Secretary, the Rev. Chandler Robbins, D.D., be requested to represent this Society on any proper occasion, during his residence abroad; and that he be empowered to negotiate any exchanges of publications with foreign Societies, and to act for the interests of the Society in any way that he may find expedient during his absence.

The President presented the letter of our venerable Honorary Member, M. Guizot, to Mr. Gladstone, as contained in the "London Times," on the subject of the war between France and Prussia. In connection with it, he mentioned the fact that another of our foreign Honorary Members was at the head of the Provisional Government of France, the eminent historian Thiers, under whose lead it was to be devoutly hoped that the Red Flag of Communism would be put down, as it once was under Lamartine. The President referred also to letters which he had recently received from our Corresponding Associates, M. de Pressensé and Count A. de Circourt. Pressensé wrote from Paris the very day on which the German

* General James Warren, of Plymouth, was a member of the Provincial Congress, at Watertown, and its President in immediate succession to General Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. He married Mercy Otis, a sister of James Otis, who was the brother spoken of in the above letter. The Librarian (undoubtedly of the College) was James Winthrop.

armies were filing through the streets of the French Capital, and was full of the hope of being enabled by the liberality of Christian men in America, as well as in England, to found a School of Protestant Christianity in the Latin Quarter of Paris. "Prussia, after Jena, founded the University of Berlin. Let Evangelical Christianity (says he), after our French Jena, consecrate itself without reserve to our moral regeneration.' M. de Circourt, after speaking with great feeling of the death of his friend, Mr. Ticknor, says:

:

"I need not tell how much I admire and am grateful for the touching and magnificent charity of your countrymen for our unhappy population. Really, the spirit of Christian charity has done wonders in these lamentable days, and redeemed the human soul, not only from misery, but from unbelief in Providence. Our friend, Col. Hwho has devoted himself to the service of the ambulances at Brussels, and elsewhere, has received, in the same week, a large remittance from Yokohama, and a small sum from Krasnoiask, gathered in copper pieces from the poor Siberians. The help from above has literally come a finibus terræ, and the contrast between so much cruelty and such inexhaustible goodness is the greatest testimony that has been borne in our day to the redeeming power of the Gospel. I knew you would lament the untimely death of Dean Alford. His hand was still

upon the plough when he has been called away: his church cannot too well bear such losses. You have heard of what Father Hyacinthe has done at Versailles. That visit recalls that which Savonarola paid to Charles VIII at Sarzana. It could not produce much more fruit, but it is honorable and characteristic."

Dr. ROBBINS, from a Committee to consider the expediency of changing the By-Laws of the Society, reported a recommendation that the commutation clause, in the latter part of Art. 5, Chap. I., which reads, "but any member shall be exempted from the annual payment [of his assessment], if, at any time after six months from his admission, he shall pay into the treasury sixty dollars in addition to what he may before have paid," be stricken out.

The report of the Committee was accepted, and the recom mendation adopted.

The President said that the business of the Annual Meeting would now be taken up.

The Reports of the Standing Committee, the Treasurer, the Librarian, and the Cabinet-keeper, were severally laid before the meeting and accepted, Mr. Mason, from the Committee on the Treasurer's account, having certified to its correctness, -and they are here printed.