a brief interval spent in vain attempts to summon her to his aid, he looked pleasantly round, and said: "Gentlemen, a good memory is a great thing, and I will give you all a piece of advice, which it may be useful to you to remember: when you are not certain that you can keep a thing in your memory, be sure to keep it in your pocket." He then, enforcing his precept by example, drew from his own pocket a scrap of paper, and read: "GENIUS, in its legitimate use, uniting wit with purity; instructing the high in their duties to the low; and, by improving the morals, elevating the social condition of man." During the delivery of his speech, Mr. Quincy was frequently interrupted with bursts of applause and hearty peals of laughter; and the happy sally with which he got over his concluding difficulty set the company in a roar, which continued until the president of the company, Josiah Quincy, Jr., arose and said that as the president of Harvard University had introduced to them Samuel Weller, he would take the liberty to read to them one of the sayings of that distinguished personage: "If ever I wanted anything of my father," said Sam, “I always asked for it in a werry 'spectful and obliging manner. If he did n't give it I took it, for fear I should be led to do anything wrong, through not having it." President Quincy had felt an intense desire to know whether the present company was to be composed of any but young men, and said, by way of illustration: "I felt, in regard to the composition of this meeting, much as Sam Weller did. You have all heard of Sam Weller, gentlemen, when he was invited to dine upon veal-pie: 'A weal-pie is a werry nice thingwerry nice; but I should like to know beforehand how it is composed, and whether there is anything there besides kittens.'" This was the point to which the president of me, the meeting alluded. Amid the arduous duties necessarily involved in the administration of the university, Mr. Quincy prepared an extensive history of this ancient seat of learning, in two volumes, published in the year 1840, with engravings. This work, though deeply lined with personal and sectarian prejudice, exhibits profound research, and furnishes valuable materials for a candid and impartial history. It should be specially noticed that Quincy lashes the Mathers with a caustic severity unworthy of this golden age of toleration. Moreover, is there not a shade of injustice to the memory of our time-honored Hancock? The memoir of Josiah Quincy, Jr., by his son, one of the most valuable works of the sort, representing his revered image in the best expres sions, should be printed in a popular form. His History of the Boston Athenæum, with the Biography of its Founders, is another production of his last days, evincing the research of an antiquarian, and the polish of a scholar. He prepared also the Memoirs of Maj. Samuel Shaw, and the Memoir of James Grahame, productions of historical value. President Quincy, on the inauguration of Edward Everett as successor to the presidency of Harvard University, April 30, 1846, in expressing his grateful sense to the corporation and the faculty, for their friendly concurrence in his measures, remarked, they had received him covered with the dust from the streets of Boston, in which he had been sent to work, as if it had been gathered on the top of Helicon, or in the walks of Plato's academy. He stated that seventeen years ago he proposed Mr. Everett for the presidency, to the eminent Bowditch, who replied, "That may do in twenty years hence, but it will not do now." "Why not?" said Quincy. "The eagle must have its flight," said Bowditch. And so Mr. Quincy was called to the sta tion, who was as much surprised by it, to use his own words, "as if he had received a call to the pastoral charge of the Old South Church,” where he was baptized. The greatest achievement probably ever effected by Mr. Quincy consists of the concise History of Boston from its first settlement, in 1630, and more especially from its incorporation as a city, a labor which has absorbed many of the best days of his life, during a period of nearly twenty years. This valuable legacy to his native city can only be measured in importance by the inconceivable advantages he secured to its citizens during his administration over its destinies. We know not the man whose decision and perseverance could have conceived and completed such a noble memorial for posterity as our own Josiah Quincy. We know not the writer, in the length and breadth of this city, who has nerved himself to more intense mental labor than the venerated Josiah Quincy. In his address, or rather eloquent appeal, on taking final leave of the mayoralty, on Jan. 3, 1829, Mr. Quincy, implied his intention to prepare a history of the city; when he remarked that it was his purpose in another way and in a more permanent form to do justice to those who had favored his most important measures. This farewell exhibit of his six years' administration was prepared as a shield to ward off the calumnies of partisans who wished him to retire from his station. "The public officer," said Mr. Quincy, "who, from a sense of public duty, dares to cross strong interests in their way to gratification at the public expense, always has had, and ever will have, meted to him the same measure. The beaten course is first to slander in order to intimidate; and if that fail, to slander in order to sacrifice. He who loves his office better than his duty will yield, and be flattered as long as he is a tool. He who loves his duty better than his office will stand erect, and take his fate." Mr. Quincy had been absorbed in a laborious fulfilment of every known duty, a prudent exercise of every invested power, a disposition shrinking from no official responsibility, and an absolute self-devotion to the interest of the city. This is an eloquent defence, comprising thirty-two pages of argument, exhibiting the fact that he retired from the mayoralty when the real estate owned by the city exceeded more than seven hundred thousand dollars, and the debt of the city was six hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars; the income and interest of their real estate, including bonds and mortgages, amounting to fifty-two thousand dollars, while the annual interest of the debt was only forty-seven thousand dollars. Mayor Quincy further exhibits what he had effected for the public health, the popular education, and advance in the public morals. The last political communication of Josiah Quincy to the people of his native city, with the exception of his successful remonstrance to proposed alterations of the city charter, was presented at a meeting in Faneuil Hall, October 14, 1850, on the expediency of the fugitiveslave law, occasioned by the invitation of citizens without distinction of party, at the head of which was his own name. Mr. Quincy expressed a hope, in his letter to the meeting, that this assembly would not partake of a party or political character, as he had been assured that it was the intention of those interested in this invitation that it should not be a party movement. The meeting was, however, conducted by advocates of the free-soil or abolition project. The Hon. Charles Francis Adams was appointed the moderator; and it was at this meeting that the proposed resolve of Rev. Nathaniel Colver was adopted, declaring, emphatically, "Constitution or no constitution, law or no law, we will not allow a fugitive slave to be taken from Massachusetts." It was in allusion to the policy of this party, that Daniel Webster advanced the bold comparison herewith, in his famous speech at Albany. "It was in Cromwell's time," remarks he, "there sprung up a race of saints, who called themselves Fifth Monarchy Men. A happy, felicitous, glorious people they were; for they had practised so many virtues, they were so enlightened, so perfect, that they got to be, in the language of that day, above ordinances. That is the higher law of this day, exactly. It is the old doctrine of the Fifth Monarchy Men of Cromwell's time revived. They were above ordinances, walked about like the man in the play, prim and spruce, self-satisfied, thankful to God that they were not as other men, but had attained so far to salvation as to be above ordinances." We are of opinion that this figure is not too broad to cover the shoulders of many enthusiasts of the free-soil party; at the same time, it is our decided belief, that Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, and the almost entire majority of advocates for emancipation, would repudiate such a doctrine. Indeed, we know that our country never had a more devoted advocate of the constitution and the laws than Josiah Quincy. Mr. Quincy's letter, dated Quincy, Oct. 14, 1850, contains an interesting political reminiscence in his own career, which we will quote: "I can speak of this subject with a somewhat personal certainty, so far as respects the existence of the feeling prevalent on this subject fifty-six years ago. Sometime about the year 1794, soon after the first law on this subject was passed, I was sent for, as a counsellor-atlaw, to appear before one of our acting justices of the peace,- Greenleaf,— to defend a person then on trial, under the charge of being a slave, on the claim of his master for delivery to him. On appearing before the justice, I found the room filled with a crowd of persons, not one of whom I knew, but who were attending the court apparently from interest or curiosity. Among them were the constables, and the agent of the master; but who the other persons were, or what was the object of their assembling, I was ignorant. I entered, of course, on my duties as an advocate; called for the evidence of the agent's authority, and denied the authority of the law of Congress, and of the magistrate under it, to deliver an inhabitant of Massachusetts into the custody of another, unless after trial by jury, according to the constitution of the State. While occupied with my argument, I was suddenly interrupted by a loud noise behind me; and, on turning round, I found, to my astonishment, both the constable and the agent on the floor, and the alleged slave passing out of the room between the files of bystanders, which were opened to the right and left for his escape. "About a fortnight elapsed, when I was called upon by Rufus Greene Amory, a lawyer of eminence at the Boston bar in that day, who showed me a letter from a southern slave-holder, directing him to prosecute Josiah Quincy for the penalty under the law of 1793, for obstructing the agent of the claimant in obtaining his slave under the process established by that law. "Mr. Amory felt, not less than myself, the folly of such a pretence; and I never heard from him, or from any one, anything more upon the subject of prosecution. This fact, and the universal gratification which the result appeared to give to the public, satisfied my mind, that, unless by accident, or stealth, or in some very thin-settled parts of the country, the law of 1793 would forever be inoperative, as the event has proved, in Massachusetts. And the same will, in my opinion, be the case, as I have already said, with the law of 1850." President Quincy, having represented Suffolk eight years in the national Congress, his native city in the State Legislature eight years, the mayoralty for a period of six years, and the presidency of Harvard University during sixteen years, has retired to his residence on the location of Beacon Hill, now levelled and overspread by elegant dwellings and the granite Cochituate reservoir; the spot from the summit of which was a striking view of Bunker Hill, thus famed by Mrs. Morton : "Witness yon tract, where first the Briton bled! cr JOHN LOWELL. JULY 4, 1799. FOR THE TOWN AUTHORITIES. "A FREE government," says our orator, "is the very hot-bed of ambition. Ambition is an indigenous plant in democracies, which produces and scatters its seeds like the balsamine, and propagates with indescribable rapidity. In such governments, therefore, there is always a plentiful crop of candidates for promotion,- of proud and haughty claimants, as well as servile beggars, of popular favor. These gormandizers of popularity are no epicures, they have not very nice discriminating palates. They are ready to taste the sweets of every |