Fortunate in his domestic arrangements, living in a beautiful home built by himself upon one of the choicest sites in Cambridge; the possessor by inheritance of means abundant for the support of his family, he was so situated that there seemed to be nothing to disturb his daily life, no shadow which could cast its blight upon his future. His sudden and untimely removal has left a desolate home, and has made a gap in the ranks of this Society which we cannot easily fill.

Mr. EDWARD CHANNING stated that, in common with other members of the Society, he had examined Mr. Toppan's " Edward Randolph" when it was published, and had recognized it as a serious and careful bit of work.

Last winter he had had occasion to review the history of Massachusetts from 1670 to 1690, and had been obliged to use Mr. Toppan's works critically. The result of this careful study went to show that the Memoir of Randolph was an admirable performance. Workmanlike and painstaking, it contains an invaluable mass of most interesting information, much of it nowhere else to be found. Unfortunately the lack of literary skill makes this information accessible to only the careful student.

The original papers in the Randolph volumes, with the Andros Records, printed by the Antiquarian Society, and the Dudley Records, printed in our own Proceedings, attest Mr. Toppan's assiduity and skill in collecting material. In their completeness they are monumental, and will always serve as a model to future compilers. In short, Mr. Toppan may be said to have rescued from oblivion the evidences for the study of one of the most remarkable crises in the history of Massachusetts.

Rev. Dr. SLAFTER, President of the Prince Society, spoke of Mr. Toppan, in substance, as follows:

About ten or twelve years ago I became acquainted with Mr. Toppan and his interesting family at Little Boar's Head, New Hampshire, where we were passing the summer. In our conversations I saw clearly that he was a good scholar and a careful and conscientious investigator. Consulting with Governor Charles H. Bell, who was our neighbor, and at that time a Vice-President of the Prince Society, we came to the conclusion that he would make a valuable member of our

Council. In due time he was not only elected a member of the Prince Society, but its Corresponding Secretary, which office he held and discharged with great fidelity and promptness till his death.

Soon after he became a member of the Society, he was requested to prepare a monograph on the celebrated Edward Randolph, whose career was so intimately connected with the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. This was a work of no small dimensions. Very little of his correspondence had ever been. printed. It was scattered, far and wide, in known and unknown depositories of historical material. To ferret it out and bring it to light was, of necessity, a long and difficult task.

Mr. Toppan entered upon the work with energy, zeal, and even enthusiasm. He spent several weeks in the archives of manuscripts in the State House in Boston, carefully copying out with his own hand whatever related to the Randolph controversy. He afterwards visited London, and made researches in all the possible depositories of manuscripts relating to the subject in quest. He made thorough investigations in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and ascertained in some way, we know not how, that certain letters of Randolph were in private hands. Copies of these were not permitted to be made, but the originals were offered for a "consideration." The Prince Society lost no time in making the purchase.

All these researches, so briefly alluded to here, extended through not less than seven or eight industrious years. Such investigations cannot be hastened. The eye, wide open, with abundant time, sees often what eludes all hurried investigations. When this "collecting process collecting process" was completed, there was not a known letter or document of any kind relating to the Randolph controversy which was not in our collection. It would be imprudent to say that there was absolutely none in existence, but we run little risk in hazarding the opinion that there is to-day no important document relating to the controversy not included in the five volumes of the Prince Society's publication.

The Memoir of Randolph is chiefly a statement, in chronological order, of the events of his life, entering largely, perhaps too largely, into details. A method more compressed, equally comprehensive and clear, would doubtless have rendered the

narrative more picturesque and entertaining. But the historian, for whom these volumes are prepared, may perhaps find greater assistance in these apparently over-abundant and dry details.

All of the five volumes are heavily annotated, and display a vast erudition and a wide collateral reading. The references are so clearly stated, as required by the rules of the Prince Society, that they can be easily found, and cannot fail to be a great aid and convenience to the historical student. This monograph on Edward Randolph is the magnum opus of Mr. Toppan's historical career. It was his first and, we regret to say, his last great work. It is a monument of which any scholar might well be proud. By his sagacity, perseverance, and unwearied diligence, he has brought together, in original documents, the means of forming a just opinion of the character, the aims, purposes, and motives of Edward Randolph as a loyal subject and agent of the English crown. The historian is, and will forever be, under special obligations to Mr. Toppan, for the achievement of this important work. I know of no one who would have done it better; indeed, I know of no one who, I believe, would have done it so well.

Mr. MELVILLE M. BIGELOW, having been asked to give his personal recollections of the late Bishop Stubbs, said:

There is a legal maxim which historians have sometimes borrowed, to the effect that jurisdiction over anything draws jurisdiction over all things accessory to it. I shall have to invoke that maxim this afternoon, or take my seat very soon. My personal recollections of the late Bishop of Oxford-meaning recollections of face-to-face acquaintance with him could be told in a few words; for they cover but a short time and are in no way remarkable. Indeed, they are not recollections of William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, but of William Stubbs, Regius Professor of Modern History; and I presume there are others here who knew him, even in that capacity, better than I did.

You will then, I am sure, permit me to make use of the maxim to give expression to some thoughts which naturally. grow out of personal recollections, though no part of them.

I first met Professor Stubbs in the summer of 1880, and then saw him often for perhaps six weeks, possibly not so long. The manuscript of a certain History of Procedure in England had

fallen into his hands some time before, and I was now in England to see it through the press. At the suggestion of Professor Stubbs, I had found lodgings in Broad Street, Oxford, next door to Kettel Hall, where Professor Stubbs himself lived, and was at once welcomed and invited to come to his house as often as I could. On my first appearance there, Professor Stubbs, to my surprise and delight, asked if he could not read my proof-sheets. He read them, and, I need hardly say, to my profit. At the end of the book there is a considerable collection of documents, most of which had never before seen the light. Many of these were now read by Professor Stubbs before they went to the printer; they interested him; and though he had not seen them before, he commented upon them as readily and as helpfully as if he had always known them. He seemed to recognize them at once; in many ways he was much more familiar with them than I was. I knew them only as documents of a legal nature, illustrating certain phases of legal procedure; he knew them, I was going to say, personally; he knew where they came from, who had written them, who many of the persons named in them were, what in many instances the story was about. Nothing so impressed me with the extent of the stores of his knowledge and of his ready command of what he knew.

And so my acquaintance with Professor Stubbs went on until he or I left Oxford.

You can make a pretty good guess of some of my personal recollections of the author of the "Constitutional History of England," after what I have said. A most kindly man; a man full of sympathy with others who were working in historical fields, especially with those younger than himself; a man without a trace of jealousy, simple and unaffected in manners, generous in the highest degree in judgment of others, modest equally in regard to his own work. Of these qualities perhaps his kindliness struck me most. At a time when controversy, in fields of history where he certainly was one of the masters, was always heated and often bitter, he steadily kept aloof; he would not pass the bounds of friendly discussion. If he could not have friendly relations with others, he would have none at all, that appears to have been the ground he took. He would not even review books; to be honest, he would often be compelled to say disagreeable things. He

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preferred to keep silent, except when duty called him to speak.

In conversation Professor Stubbs was full of "light and leading," fluent enough, without being what is called a great talker. But what of a certain gift which most men supremely covet? had Professor Stubbs a sense of humor? Who, from reading his Constitutional History, or his Prefaces in the Rolls series, or his dissertations in the Select Charters, could believe it? Can a man have humor who can write three big volumes and never show sign of it? Pardon me; I have not read a single volume of the Constitutional History through has any one else? - but so far as I have read I have nothing to remember but serious periods, with judgments scattered along as cold as they are final, as final, in the words of another, as the crack of doom. But if any one is convinced that Professor Stubbs was a man without humor, give me leave to undeceive him, especially if it be true, as a very brilliant member of this Society has intimated, that a literary man cannot be great who is wanting in humor. If that be true, I want to say that that element of greatness was not wanting in William Stubbs. It is not necessary, I hope, to recall instances, after the lapse of more than twenty years: they must have lost their freshness and perhaps their point by this time; and possibly infirmity of memory might distort them. But that Professor Stubbs had at least a fair share of humor- enough to add a distinct charm to his speech I know from a lively impression. He kept it out of his histories I believe he resolutely kept it out; he did not keep it from his friends, whether at home or in the classroom. Read his lecture on the "Reign of Henry Seventh." The period is not one with which I am familiar; I suppose that it is one of the least interesting of all periods of English history; my impression of it is of something dry and tedious in the extreme. Could it be made readable? Professor Stubbs, who is justly believed to be unreadable, has lighted up the subject with a vivacity and humor that few men could have given to it. "The Reign of Henry Seventh" is readable it is literature; a thing perhaps, in the eyes of the lecturer, to be pardoned. "Some part of the volume," says the author in his Preface to the lectures, "may be readable... and the readable part trifling." Serious history must not be written in that way! Be it so, if otherwise we could not have