MEMBERS DECEASED.

Members who have died, or of whose death information has been received, since the last volume of Proceedings was issued, December 21, 1903, arranged in the

order of their election, and with date of death.

[The Resident Membership of Rev. Arthur Latham Perry, LL.D., was terminated by resignation Dec. 8, 1904, and that of James Schouler, LL.D., was terminated Dec. 27, 1904, by his removal from Massachusetts.]

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

THE

NOVEMBER MEETING, 1903.

HE stated meeting was held on Thursday, the 12th instant, at three o'clock, P. M.; the President, CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D., in the chair.

The record of the October meeting was read and approved; and the usual monthly reports were presented, the Librarian's report covering a period of two months.

Mr. Moorfield Storey was elected a Resident Member.

A letter was read from the chairman of the State House Commission, asking for suggestions as to a public memorial or memorials of John Adams, second President of the United States, and of John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States; and in accordance with a recommendation of the Council it was

Voted, That Messrs. Hoar, Hale, and Norton be a Committee to represent the Society in the matter of a memorial or memorials to John Adams, the second President of the United States, and John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, both former members of the Society, in compliance with the invitation of the State House Commission of October 19, 1903.

The PRESIDENT said:

In that biography of Gladstone which is now on so many tables and in the hands of such a multitude of readers, Mr. Morley tells us that when about to face one of his great parliamentary ordeals, it was the habit of Mr. Gladstone to have

recourse to his biblical recollections, whence to fortify himself with some text appropriate to the occasion. So on the 8th of April, when he was to lay before the House of Commons his plan of Irish Home Rule, this entry appears in the pocket diary it was his custom to keep," The message came to me this morning: Hold thou up my goings in thy path, that my footsteps slip not.'" Needless to say I am no more Mr. Gladstone than is this the Commons House of Great Britain; but reading the above the other day in Morley's book, it did occur to me that, were I to select an appropriate text for this particular meeting of the Society, I should find it in the twelfth verse of the tenth chapter of First Corinthians, — the familiar precept," Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." A month ago we met after the usual summer intermission, and, referring to the corresponding meeting of four years before, when it had devolved on me to announce four vacancies on our roll, all of which had occurred during the summer then just ended, I ventured to congratulate myself and the Society that we now met with a membership in no way diminished, our roll of Resident Members when we that day adjourned numbering 99, that of Corresponding Members 50, that of Honorary Members 8,- a total membership of 156, our full number being 160. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall"; to-day the membership of a month ago is noticeably reduced, instead of 156 it stands at 152. George Harris Monroe, a Resident Member, died at his house in Brookline on the evening of Thursday, October 15; and General Edward McCrady, a Corresponding Member, died at Charleston, South Carolina, on the 1st instant. The interval since our October meeting has, however, been made more and otherwise memorable by the disappearance from the historical firmament of two luminaries so widely recognized as to have found a place on our severely restricted Honorary Roll, William Edward Hartpole Lecky died at his house in Onslow Gardens, London, October 22; and, last and greatest of all, Theodor Mommsen, full of years and laden with honors, passed away at his home in Charlottenburg, Prussia, on the morning of Sunday, November 1.

It is not customary for the presiding officer here, when announcing deaths that have occurred, to do more than refer briefly to the connection with the Society of those who are