tion, not on the deaths of individual soldiers, but on the great cause for which many of them died, and on the great fact of Union which blesses all who survive. For the vital outcome of the Civil War was the preservation of the Union, and since we are once more a united people, rejoicing to declare Union essential to our national life, this fact ought to be celebrated among our historic festivals. And what could be more fitting than to transform the day of Personal Bereavement into the day of National Union? Has not Providence bidden us to do this, by bringing the greater harmony out of the great discord of the war?

Such a recognition of our historic structure would add immeasurably to the educative value of our holidays. Liberty, Independence, Union, were won through the collective effort of the nation; but we ought also to honor one private virtue, Patriotism, which should be the first equipment of every citizen, for on it all these, and the maintenance of free government, depend. Happily, in George Washington we have the supreme embodiment of Patriotism, and in observing his birthday as a national holiday, we have taken the best way to keep bright the knowledge of this cardinal civic virtue. With the Twenty-second of February already dedicated to the peerless patriot, it seems superfluous, if not impertinent, to assign the Nineteenth of April to patriots in general.

By some such systematic remembrance of our national evolution as I have imperfectly outlined, our holidays would gain in interest, in associations, in power to stamp on the dullest mind the few elements of true Americanism. The meaning of each festival would be as clear as if it were the title of a chapter of the history of the United States. The incomputably precious experience of our forerunners, which now lies latent or neglected, would then come constantly into play, warning us what not to do, and teaching us what to do. Through forgetfulness of bygone mistakes, each generation of legislators repeats the old proved errors, and misses the guidance of the past.

The scheme of holidays which I have described involves no innovations. The holidays themselves have already been set apart; the historic facts to be commemorated are plain; it only remains to join them. In the future, other elements may slowly be unfolded as essential to the nation. Possibly, for

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instance, the community of interests of the Anglo-Saxon race may be regarded as worthy of annual celebration; and then, what day could be more appropriate for an All-Saxon jubilee than the twelfth of February, the date on which, in the year 1809, Charles Darwin was born in England and Abraham Lincoln was born in America? In that coincidence there well may be a prophecy. But leaving the future to take care of itself, it concerns us to know the Past, which is our heritage, and to draw from it, as from an inexhaustible reservoir, the experience which shall quicken our patriotism, instruct and ennoble our government, purify our laws, and make us one people in thought and wish and act. The great nations that are to be will be great, not because of their teeming population, nor of their imperial area, but because of their character. To get character, a nation must possess that self-knowledge which can come only through a true understanding of its history.

Mr. WILLIAM S. APPLETON said:

I think this meeting should not pass without notice of the death of John Ward Dean, perhaps the foremost antiquarian in these parts since the death of James Savage. He ought to have been a member of this Society twenty years ago, and I hope and think that I am not the only one who regrets that his name is not on our roll. But unfortunately this mistake cannot now be rectified. He has left his record in the "New England Historical and Genealogical Register," of which he was Editor for something more than twenty-five years. Outside of this his most important works are the Memoirs of the Rev. Nathaniel Ward and the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, both very carefully done. His worst failing was that of lamented McKinley: he was too good-natured, too kind-hearted. He made it a positive rule that nothing but good should be said of works reviewed in the "Register." Consequently one looks in vain there for any real honest criticism, even of the poorest Genealogies, the most commonplace Town Histories. But this failing is among us perhaps reckoned rather a good quality, no matter how misapplied; and I should not mention it except for its misleading results. My own association with him was always of the pleasantest.