THE DEATH OF JOSIAH QUINCY. REMARKS MADE AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, JULY 14, 1864. GENTLEMEN OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, When we were last assembled here, at our stated monthly meeting, on the ninth day of June, our Society, for the first time since its institution in 1791, had on its catalogue just a hundred names of living members, resident within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. An election at the previous meeting in May had at length completed the full number allowed by our charter; and on that day our roll was full. At the head of that roll-first in the order of seniority, and second, certainly, in nothing that could attract interest, respect, and veneration stood the name of one who had been a member of the Society during sixty-eight out of the seventy years of our corporate existence; who had witnessed our small beginnings; who had been associated with Belknap and Sullivan and Tudor and Minot, and the rest of the little band of our immediate founders, in all but our very earliest proceedings and publications; who for seventeen years, long past, had been our Treasurer, and had repeatedly done faithful and valuable service as a member of our Executive and of our Publishing Committees; whose interest in our prosperity and welfare had known no suspension or abatement with the lapse of time; who had contributed liberally to the means by which our condition had of late been so largely improved, and our accommodations so widely extended; and who so often, during the very last years of his eventful and protracted life, had lent the highest interest to our meetings by his venerable presence, and by his earnest and impressive participation in our discussions and doings. You all remember, I am sure, how proudly he marshalled the way for us into this beautiful Dowse Library, when its foldingdoors were first thrown open seven or eight years ago, and when it might so well have been said of him : "The monumental pomp of age Was with this goodly personage ; Of eighty years, to loftier height." You all remember how impressively he reminded us, not long afterwards, at that memorable meeting on the death of our lamented Prescott, that he became a member of this Society the very year in which that illustrious historian was born. You all remember how playfully he observed, a few years later, when seconding the nomination of the late Lord Lyndhurst as one of our Honorary Members, that the same nurse had served in immediate succession for the infant Copley and himself, and that she must certainly have given them both something very good to make them live so long. You all remember how pleasantly he recalled to us that earliest reminiscence of his own infancy, when, being taken by his widowed mother out of Boston, while it was in the joint possession of the British army and of a pestilence even more formidable than any army, he was stopped at the lines to be smoked, for fear he might communicate contagion to the American troops who were besieging the town. You have not forgotten that delightful meeting beneath his own hospitable roof, on the eighty-third anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, the guns of which might have startled his own infant slumbers, when he read to us so many interesting memoranda, from the manuscript diaries of his patriot father, in regard to events which led to the establishment of our National Independence. Still less can any of you have forgotten his personal attendance here, only a few months since, when, with an evident conscious ness that he had come among us for the last time, he presented to us several most interesting and valuable historical documents, - at this moment passing through the press, which he had recently observed among his private papers; which he thought might possibly have come into his possession as one of our Publishing Committee, more than half a century ago; and which, with the scrupulous exactness which characterized him through life, he desired to deliver up to us personally, before it should be too late for him to do so. No wonder, my friends, that we always welcomed his presence here with such eager interest. No wonder that with so much pleasure we saw him seated, from time to time, in yonder Washington chair, hitherto reserved for him alone; for he alone of our number had ever personally seen and known that "foremost man of all this world." No wonder that we cherished his name with so much pride at the head of our roll, as an historical name, linking us, by its associations with the living as well as with the dead, to the heroic period of our Revolutionary struggle; and no wonder, certainly, that we all feel deeply to-day, when we are assembled to receive the official announcement of his death, that a void has been created in our ranks and in our hearts, which can hardly be filled. I have spoken of his name as an historical name; and I need hardly say, that it would have been so, even had it been associated with no other career than his own. His own fortunate and remarkable life, embracing the whole period of our existence thus far as a nation, and covering more than a third of the time since the earliest colonial settlement of New England, a life crowded with the most varied and valuable public service, and crowned at last with such a measure of honor, love, and reverence, as rarely falls to the lot of humanity, was sufficient in itself to secure for him an historical celebrity, even while he still lived. But, indeed, his name had entered into history while he was yet an unconscious child. In a letter of the Rev. Dr. William Gordon, dated on the 26th of April, 1775, and contained in his contemporaneous "History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of America," will be found the following passage: My friend Quincy has sacrificed his life for the sake of his country. The ship in which he sailed arrived at Cape Ann within these two days; but he lived not to get on shore, or to hear and triumph at the account of the success of the Lexington engagement. His remains will be honorably interred by his relations. Let him be numbered with the patriotic heroes who fall in the cause of Liberty, and let his memory be dear to posterity. Let his only surviving child, a son of about three years, live to possess his noble virtues, and to transmit his name down to future generations.” Nor can we fail to recall, in this connection, those most remarkable words in the last will and testament of that patriot father, whose career was as brilliant as it was brief, and whose premature death was among the severest losses of our early Revolutionary period: "I give to my son, when he shall arrive to the age of fifteen years, Algernon Sidney's Works, John Locke's Works, Lord Bacon's Works, Gordon's Tacitus, and Cato's Letters. May the spirit of Liberty rest upon him!" Such was the introduction to history of him whose life is just closed. Such were the utterances in regard to him while he was yet but of infant years. How rarely is it vouchsafed to any one to fulfil such hopes and expectations? Yet, now that he has left us at almost a patriarch's age, these words seem to have been prophetic of the career which awaited him; and we could hardly find a juster or a more enviable inscription for his monument than to say that he lived to possess the noble virtues of his father, and to transmit his name down to future generations," and that "the spirit of Liberty rested upon him." It is not for me, however, gentlemen, to attempt even a sketch of the career or character of our departed associate and friend. I have indeed been permitted to know him for many years past, as intimately, perhaps, as the difference of our ages would allow. As I attended his remains a few days since as one of the pallbearers, a distinction which was assigned me as your President, -I could not forget how often at least forty years before, when he was the next-door neighbor of my father's family, I had walked along with him, hand in hand, of a summer or a winter morning, he on his way to the City Hall as the honored Mayor of Boston; and I, as a boy, to the Public Latin School just opposite. From that time to this I have enjoyed his acquaintance and his friendship, and have counted them among the cherished privileges of my life. But there are those of our number, and some of them present with us to-day, who have been associated with him, as I have never been, in more than one of his varied public employments, and who can bear personal testimony to the fidelity and ability with which he discharged them. We may look in vain, it is true, for any of the personal associates of his early career as a statesman. He had outlived almost all the contemporaries of his long and brilliant service in our State and National Legislatures. But associates and witnesses are still left of his vigorous and most successful administration of our municipal affairs, and of his faithful and devoted labors for sixteen years as President of our beloved University. Meantime, the evidences of his literary and intellectual accomplishments are familiar to us all, in his History of the University, in his History of the Athenæum, in his Municipal History of Boston, in his Biographies of his ever-honored father and of his illustrious friend and kinsman, John Quincy Adams, and in so many speeches, addresses, and essays upon almost every variety of topic, historical, political, literary, social, and moral. We may follow him back, indeed, to the day when he was graduated with the highest honors at the University of which he lived to be the oldest alumnus; and we shall never find him idle or unemployed, nor ever fail to trace him by some earnest word or some energetic act. Everywhere we shall see him a man of untiring industry, of spotless integrity, of practical ability and sagacity, of the boldest independence and sturdiest self-reliance; a man of laborious investigation as well as of prompt action, with a ready pen and an eloquent tongue for defending and advocating whatever cause he espoused and whatever policy he adopted. Even those who may have differed from him as not a few, perhaps, did as to some of his earlier or of his later views of public affairs, could never help admiring the earnest enthusiasm of his character, and the unflinching courage with which he clung to his own deliberate convictions of duty. Nor could any one ever doubt that a sincere and ardent love of his country and of his - |