complaint, bonds, accounts, deeds, warrants, etc. But particularly valuable will be found that class of papers, such as wills, letters of attorney, bills of exchange, etc., showing connection between persons and families in New England and Old England. There are also several shorthand letters throwing light upon Lechford's private affairs and his dealings with the rulers of the Colony. These, however, had already been deciphered and made use of by our associate, Dr. TRUMBULL, in his introduction to the Plain Dealing.

WILLIAM S. BARTON, Esq., of Worcester, read some extracts from early diaries kept by his father, the late Hon. Ira M. Barton, accompanying the same by explanatory remarks.

Mr. PUTNAM gave a brief account of the continued explorations of the mounds in Ohio by Dr. Charles L. Metz and himself; calling particular attention to the discovery of a mound under which was a peculiar V-shaped arrangement of stones extending to the depth of about five feet and at the bottom of which was a stone cist containing the remains of a human skeleton extended at full length. The space above this grave between the sloping sides, walled with large flat stones, was filled with earth on which, and covering the edge of the sloping walls, were many stones forming a regular oblong structure. At one end of this structure was a small stone cist containing burnt human bones and a clay vessel. In the mound also were four stone graves made of large flat limestones put on edge and covered with flat stones. On the original surface under the mound was a large hearth, made of stones set on edge, on which was a thick layer of ashes containing burnt bones, and below the ashes was a long flint point. Over these interesting structures and graves a small mound of earth, about five feet high, had been formed.

Mr. PUTNAM dwelt on the importance of this particular mound, the discovery of which was due to Dr. Metz, in

showing how much there was yet to be learned about the mounds of this country and the importance of conducting the explorations in a thorough and systematic manner. He also called attention to some other important and novel discoveries which had been made by the workers of the Peabody Museum, and to the great advance which had taken place during the past few years in American Archæology, which was at last being studied in a way due to its importance, by a few earnest workers who were pursuing the investigation with all the methods of science.

The meeting was then dissolved.

JOHN D. WASHBURN,

Recording Secretary.

REPORT OF THE COUNCIL.

SINCE our semi-annual meeting we have lost by death. (August 11), one foreign member, Lord Houghton, better known in the literary world as the Right Honorable Richard Monckton Milnes, D.C.L., F.R.S., whose memory has special claims on our reverence and gratitude for his earnest, persistent and active sympathy with our country in the War of the Rebellion, a sympathy shared with him, indeed, by many Englishmen of commanding reputation and influence, but by very few of the hereditary aristocracy, and, so far as we know, by but one member of the House of Lords. He was born June 19, 1809. He entered Parliament in 1837, and continued to represent the same constituency till 1863, when a patent of nobility transferred him to the upper house. A statesman rather than a politician, he was at the outset a liberal conservative, and in later years has been reckoned as a conservative member of the Liberal party,-never casting a party-vote as such, but uniformly the advocate of freedom, education and progress. He has labored largely and successfully for improvements in the treatment and measures for the reformation of criminals, and has been a pioneer or a diligent helper in numerous philanthropic movements, in behalf of other nations, no less than of his own. His literary activity covered a wide range. He has written many articles on a great variety of subjects for the Westminster Review and for other periodicals. His narratives of travel in Greece and in the East were in their time of surpassing interest and merit, and if they are no longer much read, it is because in works of that class freshness is an essential factor of their popularity, and

in part, at least, of their actual value. He was, also, the biographer and editor of Keats. He will be best known to posterity by his poems, and would be still better known had they been fewer. Some of his poems must live, and as for the rest, if they lack anything, it is that poetic fire, which, if it be not innate, neither genius, nor culture, nor enthusiasm can by any possibility kindle.

Had the writer known at an earlier period that the office of preparing the report of the Council would devolve upon him, he would have selected, as is usual, some topic of historical research, and have employed whatever ability he had in the attempt to do it justice. But as he was asked to perform this duty only on the tenth of August, with the certainty of spending a large part and the expectation of spending nearly half of the intervening time where he could have access neither to his own nor to any other library, he has been compelled to evolve a report, if not from his own inner consciousness, from his observation and experience as a reader and student of history.

I take for my subject the Fallacies of History, and my aim will be to show how history, whether written or unwritten, may be made virtually authentic, and may yield its maximum of instruction. Permit me to say at the outset, that I include biography under the general name of history, of which, as I shall attempt to show before I close, it is not the feeder, but the most significant, precious and fruitful form or department.

I would first speak of the personal equation of the writer of history. In astronomical calculations, in which the utmost accuracy is required, allowance is always made for the observer's personal equation, for the ascertained degree of promptness and precision in his perceptive faculties, so that the same figures reported by two assistant observers would have a somewhat different estimate and registration at the hand of their principal. This equation is almost always a large one in the historian or biographer.

The pun on Macaulay's History of England, by which it was said to be his story, meant to satirize him, ought to be generalized as a well-nigh universal law. The story of a nation, an epoch, an individual man or woman, is almost always to a considerable extent an autobiography, and sometimes tells us more of the author than of his subject. Thus, to take an extreme case, Boswell's Johnson is but a caricature of the man whose mind the author was utterly incapable of sounding or measuring; but it gives us a lifelike picture of the jackall biographer himself.

Great men equally with small men depict themselves in their histories. Our eminent associate, Bancroft, second to no historian in the thoroughness of his investigation, in conscientious accuracy of detail, and in artistical skill and pictorial power, yet cannot but look on every important personage or event with his own eyes. His may be the right view; yet in many cases it is a view which he would not have taken but for the combined influence of his familiarity with the ancient republics and his sympathy with the democratic party in our own.

We are greatly

We all want chiaro-scuro in the histories that we read; but the lights and shadows can be transferred to the printed page only from the writer's own mind, and though he does not make the facts, he does create, if not purposely, yet spontaneously and inevitably, the higher or lower relief in which they are severally presented to us. We must then apply the necessary reduction as we read. aided in this by reading historians of diverse—when possible, of opposite-opinions and feelings. They often define, and sometimes neutralize each other's equations, and thus bring us much nearer the actual truth than either of them can have been. It must be always borne in mind that it is the very histories that are most worth reading—those written by men of strong opinions, attachments and sympathies that most need to be controlled by parallel authorities, or, when that cannot be, by the careful estimate of