February, when there was a very great and fearful storm of wind and rain. But when he had once entered the sealing of the Charter and the final accomplishment of his great work for Connecticut, personal casualties and elemental convulsions seemed to have lost their significance. He felt that this little Almanac had fulfilled its purpose, and that, if it contained no other entry, there was enough already recorded to make it precious for ever.

Under that Charter the two Colonies at Hartford and New Haven were happily united, as you know, in 1665, and John Winthrop became the first Governor of the whole of Connecticut as it now stands on the map, and continued in that office until his death.

Meantime, however, and indeed more than twenty years before the union of these two Colonies into one State, another and even more interesting and more important union had been formed. I mean the great confederation of the New England Colonies in 1643, the original model and example of that larger confederation which carried us through our War of Independence, and under which American liberty was vindicated and established, and of that still nobler and more precious Union under which we now live. That confederation was the exclusive work of Massachusetts and Connecticut, embracing as it did only the four Colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, of New Haven and Connecticut, which were afterwards incorporated into two Commonwealths.

As one of the Commissioners to the little Congress of this Confederation, your Connecticut Governor Winthrop came to Boston in 1676, and here was taken ill, and here died, after a life as distinguished for moral beauty as it was for public services. He left a son, however, in Connecticut, who succeeded to the favor which his father had enjoyed, and who, after serving for several years as Commander of the Connecticut Forces, and after representing the Colony for four years at the Court of William and Mary, where he was engaged in successfully vindicating the Charter which his father had procured, became Governor of the State in his turn in the year 1698, and continued such for nine years, until his death in 1707. And he, too, hap

pened to be in Boston when the day of his visitation arrived, and thus both your Connecticut Governors were laid down to rest in the same tomb in which the old Governor of Massachusetts, the father of the one and the grandfather of the other, had been previously laid in the year 1649. And their tomb remaineth with us unto this day, in the old King's Chapel Burying Ground; and there, by the leave of the City Fathers, whose favor in this respect I beg to bespeak in advance, I hope to find a resting place for myself, and to mingle my dust with that of those good old Massachusetts and Connecticut Governors, whenever my far humbler and less important career shall have been brought to a close.

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I have said enough, Mr. President, and perhaps more than enough, about the early Governors of Connecticut, and about John Winthrop in particular, — both to fulfil the requisitions of the call which you have made upon me, and also to substantiate my own claim to be present here this evening, by some better title than that of a mere guest.

And now let me only say, in drawing to a close, that none of us, I think, need feel ashamed in tracing our descent to these old Connecticut Colonies; that none of us, on the contrary, can feel any thing but a just pride in looking back over the history of the old Commonwealth into which those Colonies were afterwards incorporated. That history, from the days of its early Governors to this hour, has been a distinguished and a memorable one.

Nowhere have religion and piety been more sincere and more fervent than in that land of Davenport and Hooker; nowhere have morality and virtue been more pure and undefiled; nowhere has patriotism been more disinterested and self-sacrificing; nowhere has freedom been more boldly and earnestly defended; nowhere has education been more diligently cultivated and wisely cared for. It is a significant fact that our City Fathers are at this moment engaged in summoning the Superintendent of the Connecticut Free Schools to take charge of our own Boston Schools. Well may we all feel proud of a State which has given a Jonathan Edwards to the cause of Metaphysics and of Theology; an Oliver Ellsworth to the Supreme Bench of the

Nation; a Noah Webster to Philology and Lexicography; a succession of Wolcotts and Wadsworths and Ingersolls to the line of Civilians and Statesmen; a still longer succession of Trumbulls to adorn almost every department of literary or of public life, whether of civil or of military service, of History, Poetry, or the Fine Arts; a State which has given a Ledyard, and a Nathan Hale to the catalogue of youthful heroes and martyrs ; which has given a Barlow, a Dwight, a Percival, a Pierpont, a Halleck, a Sigourney, to the Muses; which has given and is still giving a Silliman to Science. Time would fail me in attempting to go through the whole catalogue of Connecticut worthies. But I must not forget that though Massachusetts may claim, I believe, to have given birth to Israel Putnam and Roger Sherman, it was from Connecticut that they both came forth in their full-armed maturity to serve their country so nobly in the field and in the forum.

Sir, it has been common, I know, to impute to the Connecticut character a little more than its rightful share of the wooden clock and nutmeg ingredients, and to associate with it an excess of Yankee ingenuity, invention, and thrift. And now and then the rigor of certain Connecticut Blue Laws is made the subject of not unnatural jest and ridicule. But for my own part, I have often thought that a more perfect type and pattern of the true old Puritan character was to be found there, than almost anywhere else in New England or on earth; more of that unsophisticated, straight-backed integrity, and more of that uncompromising reverence for the principles of morality and the ordinances of religion, which characterized the old New England Colonists. And this is a sort of character, let me add, Mr. President, sadly wanting, I fear, in these days, and in these great cities of ours; and if Connecticut has any of it still to spare, I hope and trust that she may communicate it freely and liberally to other parts of the country. Let her sons and daughters cherish that character and take it with them, whenever they migrate, whether to the East or the West, and let them hold fast to it in their new homes, whether in the cities or on the plains. Let it be seen, at any rate, like the stream of their own beautiful River, pervading the very heart of New England, per

meating its entire length and breadth, and purifying and fertilizing the whole region through which it passes. And then, although other States may surpass her in the number of their population, and in the abundance of their wealth, and in the magnitude and magnificence of their cities, and though Charter Oaks may fall and be forgotten,-Connecticut will still continue to enjoy the proud reputation which already so justly belongs to her, of having been second to no State in the Union, whether large or small, in her contributions to the moral dignity, stability, and grandeur of our great American Republic.

Allow me, sir, before taking my seat, to offer as a sentiment,

The dust of their earliest

CONNECTICUT AND MASSACHUSETTS Governors reposes in a common tomb, and the blood of not a few of their later sons has been mingled in a common cause. May their living children be always united in the bond of fraternal love, and beneath the banner of a Union, of which their fathers furnished the original models, and the earliest successful examples !

THE

OPENING OF THE DOWSE LIBRARY.

A SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, APRIL 9, 1857.

You will hardly expect me, gentlemen, to resume my position as President in this beautiful apartment, and to take possession of this sumptuous official chair, without something more than a mere formal acknowledgment of the honor you have done me by the re-election which has just taken place. For that honor I sincerely thank you; but with this almost magical transformation fresh in our view, and with this communication and this key newly placed in my hand, I should be quite inexcusable were I to waste an instant on any thing so merely accidental, personal, and temporary, as the result of our annual election of officers.

I can hardly be mistaken in thinking, that this occasion is destined to be long remembered as an epoch in the history of our society, and that from the opening of yonder folding-doors, I might almost say, "on golden hinges turning," — through which we have just been admitted to the enjoyment of these ample accommodations and these priceless treasures, will be dated a new era of its existence.

More than sixty-six years have now elapsed since its original organization. On the nineteenth day of February last, the full term of sixty-three years was completed since the date of its original act of incorporation. Our society has thus just passed over that precise period in its career, which old superstition has been accustomed to regard as somewhat peculiarly critical. But certainly all the omens for the future are most auspicious. It has