clothed him with a glory brighter than his crown, and would
almost reconcile us, republicans as we are, to the theory of
divine right by which his crown is worn ; for earthly power,
when exercised for such an end, " doth then show likest God s."
The man of whom it shall be recorded, of whom it is already
irrevocably recorded, that, by the willing word of his mouth,
and by the eager stroke of his pen, he gave freedom to more
than twenty millions of his fellow-beings, needs no other record
to secure for him the heartfelt homage of all mankind, genera-
ation after generation, to the end of time.

I pause here for a moment, gentlemen, before proceeding to
the toast of the occasion, to invite you all to rise with me while
I propose to you

The health of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Russia !

The entire company here rose, and with great enthusiasm
answered the toast. Then, as Mr. Winthrop paused, before
continuing, His Imperial Highness rose and said :

" I propose the health of the President, Grant. Hurrah ! " and
the Duke gave a handsome cheer. The company rose again, and
responded, seeming to catch invigoration from the tone of the



BANQUET TO THE GRAND DUKE ALEXIS. 169

young Prince s voice. The band then played the " Star Span
gled Banner " for one or two minutes.

Mr. Winthrop continued as follows :

And now, may it please your Imperial Highness, it only re
mains for me, in the name and behalf of this assembled company
of my fellow-citizens, among whom are so many of the rep
resentative men of our community from all the varied walks of
labor and of life, official, legal, literary, scientific, commercial,
philanthropic, and religious, in behalf of them all and of all
whom they represent, to offer you our warmest wishes for your
personal welfare and happiness. Your brief visit to our country
is already approaching a close. We know not what future may
await you. We know not to what height of influence or author
ity in your own realm you may be destined to attain ; but we
would heartily trust that, in whatever circumstances you may
be placed, your reception in America, in this early bloom of
your manhood, may be among the cherished remembrances of a
long and prosperous life. Be assured, sir, that we shall follow
you with sincere and earnest hopes that you may return in
safety to your native land, and that the best blessings of our
common Father and Saviour may never be wanting to you.

I call upon you again, gentlemen, to rise with me and pay all
the honors of the occasion in drinking

The health of His Imperial Highness, the Grand Duke
Alexis !



DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD.



REPLY TO A TOAST FROM HON. WILLIAM GRAY, PRESIDENT OF THE
ASSOCIATION, JUNE 26, 1872.



I THANK you most heartily, Mr. President, for any part of
the compliment just paid, and I am sensible how small a part
it is, which I am at liberty to appropriate to myself. I am
most happy to find myself once more at the table of the Alumni.
I find it difficult to credit the idea that fourteen or fifteen years
have elapsed since I was present at one of these College festi
vals. And yet, sir, as I cast my eyes around this board, there is
enough, and more than enough, to remind me that it is true. It
was my distinguished privilege, when I was last here, in 1857,
to occupy the place which you now so acceptably fill, as Presi
dent of the Association and " Rex Convivii." But I look in
vain for those who were on my right hand, or on my left hand,
on that occasion. Edward Everett, the orator of that festival,
and of every festival which he attended ; the elder Quincy, ever
honored in the memory of the Sons of Harvard, not only as
having written its earlier history, but as having contributed so
large a share to the glories of its later history ; Lemuel Shaw,
the grand old Chief Justice of Massachusetts ; the learned and
accomplished Sparks ; the genial and beloved Felton, they
were all here at my side, and all responded to my call. But their
voices have long been hushed to all human hearing, and, I need
not say, they have hardly left their peers in the places which
now know them no more.

I HO]



DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD. 171

But I have not come back to-day to indulge in sad reminis
cences of the past ; nor can I pause to hail and welcome the
glorious realities of the present. A glorious present, certainly,
is ours. Never, in all its long history, were there more gratify
ing and more inspiring evidences of the prosperity of Harvard
than those which greet us on every side at this hour. Never
was there a moment when her sons had more cause for grati
tude to God and man, for all that has been done, and for all that
is in process of being done, for the honor and welfare of our
beloved Alma Mater. Why, sir, if we were to keep silent, if
we were to lift no glad and grateful voices, the very stones
would cry out against us, the stones of these numerous and
noble buildings which are rising so rapidly around us, each
one of them bearing the name of some new benefactor ! Old
things are, indeed, passing away ; all things are becoming new.
As I entered the College yard an hour or two ago, and looked
around on these costly edifices, I could not help feeling that if
my good friend, Samuel Atkins Eliot, the father of our young
and vigorous President, could have been permitted to live long
enough to witness the present palmy state of the University
which he loved so well, he would not only have been amply
repaid for all the cares and labors he underwent in its behalf, as
its Treasurer, in the day of its small things, but that he would
fully comprehend and realize that his great work for Harvard
his best work after all was in training up so devoted and
excellent a son to her love and service.

The name of ELIOT, Mr. President, in three generations, as
Benefactor, as Treasurer, and as President, has now become
indissolubly identified with the best interests and highest honor
of the University. Uno avulso, non deficit alter aureus. Long,
long may it be before any other name shall replace that name
at the head of our Academic Roll ! States and nations may
change, or may try to change, their chief magistrates as often as
they will, at their own humor or caprice, for good reasons or
for bad reasons, or for no reasons at all. But no brief adminis
trations, no shallow system of rotation, no meagre one-term
principle, can ever be adapted to the permanent welfare of a
great literary republic. The tenure of the presidents of col-



172 DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD.

leges, and more especially of our own College, like that of the
judges of our courts, should be a tenure Dum bene gesserint,
a tenure of good behaviour, which is sure to be all one with a
tenure for life.

But I am not here, Mr. President, to indulge in any general
remarks. You have called upon me, not so much as one of the
Alumni of Harvard, as in my relation to the Peabody Board of
Southern Education, which, happening to hold its annual meet
ing in Boston during the present week, has been favored by an
invitation to this festival. In their behalf, as their Chairman, I
offer to you, and the Association, the most grateful acknowledg
ment of the invitation. Sir, we have abundant cause for honor
ing the memory of George Peabody at this table, for what he
did directly and specifically for our own University. Our
Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology the very
first of the kind in our whole country which he founded and
endowed, is destined, if I mistake not, under the immediate
charge of my eminent and accomplished friend, Professor Jeffries
Wyman, over whose labors I am privileged to watch, and to
whose unwearied fidelity I can bear witness, to make no com
mon or second mark among the scientific institutions of our land.
Its pre-historic collections, as I have the best means of knowing,
are already surpassed, in interest and value, by those of no
American museum, and of but few similar institutions in any
part of the world. It was coldly recognized in some quarters,
when Mr. Peabody first allowed me to divulge his purpose to
establish and endow it. But it has justified itself even to those
who held it in the most doubtful esteem, giving a new field for
the genius of our modest but admirable Curator, and adding a
new fame to the memory of its munificent founder.

But Mr. Peabody did nobler and grander things than, this,
not, indeed, for any individual institution, nor for any single
section of our country, but for our whole glorious Union,
when he appropriated more than two millions of dollars from
his fortune, for the establishment and encouragement of free
common schools in those parts of our land which had never
before enjoyed them. I do not undervalue museums of science
or art. Still less am I insensible to the importance of collegiate



DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD. 173

education, here and everywhere. But before them all, and above
them all, our great Republican system imperatively demands uni
versal education, common-school education, schools free to all,
without money and without price. There is no enduring system
of construction or of reconstruction, North or South, East or West,
for a free country like ours, without a broad, deep, all-sustaining
foundation of common schools.

The Board to which Mr. Peabody entrusted his munificent
endowment for supplying this great want, this great necessity,
at the South, at a moment when the South was in no condition
to supply it for itself, a Board over which I count it the high
est honor of my life to have been selected by him to preside,
is represented at this table, not only by the President of the
United States, who most kindly gave up the first hours of his
vacation to come on and help us to a quorum ; and by my friend,
the Secretary of State, Governor Fish, whom we are to hail at
no distant day, I trust and believe, as " the Pilot who has weath
ered the storm," the long, pelting, pitiless storm of "Alabama"
contentions and claims, direct and indirect, but it is repre
sented here, also, by several distinguished gentlemen of the
Southern States, whom you all are eager to see and to hear. I
need but to name them to elicit the most cordial manifestations
of welcome. Here, at my side, are ex-Governor Aiken, of South
Carolina ; ex-Governor Graham, of North Carolina ; Alexander
H. H. Stuart, of Virginia, a former Secretary of the Interior ;
and Richard Taylor, a son of that sturdy and noble-hearted
patriot and hero, whom some of us once delighted to call famil
iarly " Old Zach," but whose premature death, while President
of the United States, filled the whole nation with grief, and left
us no heart to speak of him except as the lamented Zachary
Taylor, of Louisiana. I present them all to you, not merely as
cherished associates and friends of my own, but as the chosen
Trustees of our great American Philanthropist arid Benefactor.

But let me not omit to say, in conclusion, that our Peabody
Trust is still more emphatically represented here on this occa
sion by its accomplished and devoted General Agent, who after
five years of faithful service as the Secretary of the Massachusetts
Board of Education, and after eleven years of the Presidency



174 DINNER OF THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD.

of our sister University of Rhode Island, has nobly consented,
in the maturity of his experience and wisdom, to remove his
residence to Virginia, and devote the remainder of his life
God grant that it may be no brief or contingent remainder ! to
the free, common schools of the Southern States. He, above all
others, is entitled to the honors of this occasion ; and I hasten
to make way for his receiving them, by proposing

" THE HEALTH OF DR. BARNAS SEARS ! "



THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE.

REMARKS AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
NOVEMBER 14, 1872.



GENTLEMEN OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, I
must beg your attention for a few moments. I have promised our
distinguished guest, Mr. Froude, that, after the fatigue of the
interesting lecture which he has just delivered at the Tremont
Temple, he shall not be involved in any ceremonious utterances
again to-night. But as we desire that our meeting shall be a
matter of record, and that his name may be entered as among
those present, if not as taking part in its proceedings, I am sure
he will pardon me, and you will all pardon me, for an informal
word or two before we relapse into a mere social party.

Let me say, at the outset, that the arrangements for this occa
sion were made before the occurrence of the awful calamity
which we all so deeply deplore, and from which so many of us
are more or less sufferers in common with our fellow-citizens. 1
And our guest was himself the first to suggest that, in presence
of such an event, all engagements of this sort might well be
cancelled. But on consultation with our worthy host, Mr.
Lowell, I found that he saw no reason why a stated meeting
of our old Historical Society should not proceed according to
the programme under his hospitable roof, more especially as
at this moment we have no sufficient roof of our own for the
purpose. 2 Our meeting will at least furnish evidence that, while

1 The great Boston fire occurred on the 9th and 10th of November, 1872.

2 The Building of the Massachusetts Historical Society was at this time in
process of reconstruction.

[175]



176 THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE.

we heartily unite with those around us in lamenting the terrible
disaster which has befallen our beloved city, we have the fullest
faith and confidence that, at no very distant day, it will be ours
to witness and to record the reconstruction of all which has
been destroyed, the recovery of all which has been lost, the
building up again of all these waste places, and of the fortunes
of those who have occupied them, and the complete restoration
of Boston to its long-accustomed prosperity.

We may well draw consolation and confidence from the records
of the past; and I venture to presume so far upon your indul
gence, and upon the official relation which I bear to the Society,
as to turn back the pages of history for a few moments, and to
remind you how often our fathers suffered in the same way be
fore us, and how bravely and triumphantly they met such
calamities.

I doubt not that there are many of those present who remem
ber having read a discourse delivered by Cotton Mather, at
what was called " The Boston Lecture," on the seventh day of
February, 1698, and which is included in the first volume of his
" Magnalia." After alluding to the wonderful growth of our
town, until it had become known as " The Metropolis of the
whole English America," he proceeds to say: " Little was this
expected by them that first settled the town, when for a while
Boston was proverbially called Lost-toivn, for the mean and sad
circumstances of it." And then, after depicting the dangers of
famine and the ravages of the small-pox from which it had re
peatedly and severely suffered, he goes on as follows :

44 Never was any town under the cope of heaven more liable
to be laid in ashes, either through the carelessness or the wick
edness of them that sleep in it. That such a combustible heap
of contiguous houses } f et stands, it may be called a standing
miracle. It is not because the watchman keeps the city : per
haps there may be too much cause of reflection in that thing,
and of inspection too. No, it is from Thy watchful protection,
O Thou Keeper of Boston, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. *
" TEN TIMES," he continues, " has the fire made notable ruins
among us, and our good servant been almost our master ; but
the ruins have mostly and quickly been rebuilt. I suppose that



THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE. 177

many more than a thousand houses are now to be seen on this
little piece of ground, all filled with the undeserved favors of
God."

This was in the year 1698, when Boston had but seven thou
sand inhabitants, and when one thousand houses were as many
as Cotton Mather dared positively to count on our whole penin
sula. Ten times, it seems, the town had already been devas
tated by fires. You may find an account of almost all of them
in Mr. Drake s elaborate History of Boston.

One of them, in 1654, was long known as " The Great Fire ; "
but neither its locality nor extent can now be identified. Another
of them occurred in November, 1676, which was called " the
greatest fire that had ever happened in Boston." It alarmed
the whole country, as well as the town, and burned to the
ground forty-six dwelling-houses, besides other buildings, to
gether " with a Meeting House of considerable bigness." Only
two or three years afterwards, in 1679, another still more terri
ble fire occurred, when all the warehouses and a great number
of dwelling-houses, with the vessels then in the dock, were con
sumed, the most woful desolation that Boston had ever seen.
"Ah, Boston," exclaimed Mather, in view of this catastrophe,
" thou hast seen the vanity of all worldly possessions ! One
fatal morning, which laid four-score of thy dwelling-houses and
seventy of thy warehouses in a ruinous heap, gave thee to read
it in fiery characters."

So fierce were the ravages of this last fire, we are told, that
all landmarks were obliterated in several places, and considerable
trouble was experienced in fixing the bounds of estates. But,
we are also told, " rebuilding the burnt district went on with
such rapidity that lumber could not be had fast enough for the
purpose ; " and, as Dr. Mather said eighteen years afterwards,
the ruins were mostly and quickly rebuilt.

We read of another fire in 1702, which was for many years
talked of as " the seventh great fire." It broke out near the
dock, destroying a great amount of property, and " three ware
houses were blown up to hinder its spreading." It thus seems
that a hundred and sevent}^ years ago our fathers understood
this mode of arresting the flames ; perhaps better than we seem

12



178 THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE.

to have done in these latter days. But they must have been
sadly deficient in other appliances ; as, only two days before
this fire broke out, a vote had been passed in town-meeting
" that the selectmen should procure two water-engines suitable
for the extinguishing of fires, either by sending for them to Eng
land or otherwise to provide them."

Again, in October, 1711, a still more destructive conflagration
took place in Boston. The town-house, the old meeting-house,
and about a hundred other houses and buildings, were destroyed,
and a hundred and ten families turned out of doors. wc But that,"
it is recorded, " which very much added unto the horror of the
dismal night, was the tragical death of many poor men, who
were killed by the blowing-up of houses, or by venturing too
far into the fire." The bones of seven or eight of these were
supposed to be found. " From School Street to Dock Square,
including both sides of Cornhill, all the buildings were swept
away."

Once more, and finally, we turn over to 1760, when the re
membrance of all other Boston fires was almost obliterated by
that of the 20th of March of that year, which, it is said, " will
be a day memorable for the most terrible fire that has happened
in this town, or, perhaps, in any other part of North America,
far exceeding that of the 2d of October, 1711, till now termed
4 The Great Fire. Three hundred and forty-nine dwelling-
houses, stores, and shops were consumed, and above one thou
sand people were left without a habitation.

And thus has history repeated itself in the experiences of
Boston ; and thus we find that our early predecessors in these
pleasant places were called to endure calamities by fire almost
as great, perhaps quite as great in proportion to the population
and wealth and means of relief of their days, as those which
have now fallen upon us. We see, too, with what constancy
and courage they bore them, and how uniformly the record runs
that " the ruins were quickly rebuilt."

I will not come down to later years, though, even within the
memory of some now living and present, disastrous and wide
spread conflagrations have occurred, which seemed at first to
overshadow the prospect of our prosperity and growth. But



THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE. 179

we see what Boston has become in spite of all these discourage
ments and drawbacks, and how the enterprise and bravery of
her people, ever mounting with the occasion, have carried us
onward and upward to the position and elevation which we have
recently enjoyed, let me say, which we still enjoy. The same
enterprise, the same courage, are still ours. With trust in each
other, trust in ourselves, and trust in God, we shall go through
our furnace of affliction as our fathers went through theirs,
not unscorched certainly, but tried, purified, invigorated ; and
Boston will resume a leading place in the business of the country
and of the world, and rise to greater eminence than she has
ever yet attained.

Yes, my friends, I am persuaded that those who succeed us in
this Historical Society, I will not say a century hence, nor
even half a century, nor a quarter of a century, but at a much
earlier period, when they recall the incidents of this over
whelming conflagration, and describe the devouring element
leaping from roof to roof with such terrible energy, and involv
ing so much of the solidest part of our city in seemingly help
less, hopeless desolation, will say also, not only that there was
no hanging of the head or folding of the arms in despair, but
that even while the embers were still casting their glaring light
upon the sky, while the wearied firemen were still pouring rivers
of water upon the smouldering, treacherous ruins, and before
the danger of further destruction was altogether at an end, even
then the elastic and irrepressible spirit of our people asserted
itself as it had never done before ; that even then our noble
merchants, with old familiar names at their head, were engaging
their architects and making their estimates for reconstruction,
while the municipal authorities were running out the lines of
new streets and new squares, and projecting the plans of a
grander and safer business city than had ever before been wit
nessed here. And they will add to the record, that these
plans were rapidly executed and the reconstruction completely
accomplished.

True, we have lost much, and our hearts are in the deepest
sympathy with the sufferers. Indeed, we are all sufferers to
gether. There is no exemption from the results of this catas-



180 THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE.

trophe, and I would not underestimate its severity. But how
much we have left ! Almost all the dwellings of the poor as
well as of the rich ; Faneuil Hall and the State House and the
City Hall ; the old State House and the Old South ; our Charity
Bureau, never more blessed in its ministrations than at this
moment ; all our court houses and record offices, not one
touched ; our public library, all our school-houses, and almost
all our churches. Still more, the enterprise and liberality of
our capitalists ; the genius of our engineers and inventors ; the
public spirit of our citizens ; the sympathy of our fellow-men
everywhere, all are left to us; and, above all else, that abid
ing faith and trust in a wise and merciful Providence, which we
inherited from our fathers, and from our mothers also, and
which is emblazoned on the very seal of our city, Sicut Patri-
bus, sit Deus nobis. While we are true to that motto, and to the
spirit of that motto, Boston will never be called " Lost-town,"
either proverbially or otherwise, however it may have been so
called in the days which Cotton Mather described.

And now let me turn from this painful topic, which could not
fall to be uppermost in all our thoughts arid hearts to-night,
let me turn to a word of welcome to our distinguished guest.
He needs no introduction to any of us. His elaborate and brill
iant History has introduced him, long before his arrival, to every
reader of the English tongue. Whether or not he has absolutely
reversed or even modified our views of some of the great figures
of the period which he describes, we all feel that he has gone
down deeper into the mines of history than any of his predeces
sors in the same field, and has brought up things rich and rare
for our entertainment and instruction, weaving them with sur
passing skill into the most attractive and effective form. He
has given a new zest to the reading and the study of that Eng
lish history, which I well remember that Daniel Webster, when
I was a law student in his office, so emphatically enjoined upon