to be lost sight of by the city Council, until effected upon a scale proportionate to its convenience and our urgent necessities. If there be any privilege which a city ought to reserve exclusively in its own hands, and under its own control, it is that of supplying itself with water." During a period of twenty years this vastly important enterprise was a subject of warm controversy, until the breaking up of the earth, by the hands of John Quincy Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., on the embankments of Lake Cochituate, Aug. 20, 1846.

Mr. Quincy was succeeded by Mr. Otis to the mayoralty of his native city, in the year 1829; and President Kirkland having resigned his station as the head of Harvard University in the year previous, Mr. Quincy was elected by the corporation to the presidency, Jan. 15, 1829. The intellectual capacities, energetic manners, and especially the financial penetration, of Mr. Quincy, induced such men as Bowditch, Story and Jackson, to single him as the individual peculiarly qualified to improve the fiscal concerns and control the insubordinate spirit of the students. The inauguration occurred June 2, 1829; and, after the seal of the university and other badges of office were extended to the president elect, by Gov. Lincoln, Mr. Quincy responded in Latin, when he made a happy allusion to the fact of his being unexpectedly called, from the dust and clamor of the capital, to preside over our great literary institution, which elicited a prompt expression of applause from the audience. The president then took his seat in the pulpit, and assumed the academic cap, on which occasion the old house rang again with applause. He delivered an inaugural discourse on the occasion, in which he urged the expediency of concentrating public patronage to one great university, in preference to wasting away the resources of the State upon small institutions, where its benefits would not be generally felt. An apt volunteer sentiment for this university was given at the dinner, which was "May it unite the beauty, strength and durability, of Quincy granite." The same decision of character, so strongly marked in his city administration, forthwith operated to the benefit of this ancient seat of learning, which, from being heavily encumbered with debt, emerged into the light of pecuniary independence; and he has done more to improve and beautify the premises of venerable Harvard than any of his predecessors. He once said of the university, "May it, like the royal mail packets, distribute good letters over our land.”

We cannot forbear introducing an incident illustrative of Mr. Quin

cy's happy presence of mind. We find it in a letter of William Wirt, addressed to William Pope, Aug. 29, 1829, in which he relates of President Quincy: "He happened, when I made him a visit, to ask me in what college I had graduated. I was obliged to admit that I had never been a student at any college. A shade of embarrassment, scarcely perceptible, just flitted across his countenance; but he recovered in an instant, and added, most gracefully, "Upon my word, you furnish a very strong argument against the utility of a college education."

Mr. Quincy had but just entered on his new sphere of usefulness, when he was called to prepare an address on the celebration of the close of the second century from the settlement of his native city, in the last sentence of which he says: "In all times to come, as in all times past, may Boston be among the foremost and the boldest to exemplify and uphold whatever constitutes the prosperity, the happiness, and the glory, of New England." At the festival in Faneuil Hall, Sept. 17, 1830, on this occasion, the following sentiment was advanced by William Hayden: "The Peninsula of Shawmut: Bought by Edmund Quincy, for the benefit of our ancestors. The City of Boston: Improved and embellished by Josiah Quincy, for our benefit."

At the centennial celebration of Harvard College, September, 1836, the Rev. Dr. Palfrey read a passage from the will of the father of President Quincy, by which he bequeathed two thousand pounds sterling to the college, in case his son should die a minor. After computing the relative value of money at the date of the will, and its value at the present day, Dr. Palfrey estimated the conditional bequest to be equal to ten thousand dollars, and forthwith proposed this toast: "Harvard College: A strangely fortunate yet disappointed legatee, who, in losing ten thousand dollars, gained a president." On this occasion, Edward Everett, in allusion to a remark of President Quincy, announced the sentiment, that "his fame shall not be left to a doggerel dirge and a Latin epitaph; we pronounce him, while he lives, in our mother tongue, the ornament of the forum, the senate, and the academy."

President Quincy was remarkable for ready wit on public festive. occasions, one of the finest specimens of which appears in his speech at the dinner to Charles Dickens, the famous author of the Pickwick Club, at the Papantis Hall, in Boston, Feb. 2, 1842. When Judge Loring introduced a happy compliment to Mr. Quincy, in an allusion

to Harvard College at the close of an effective speech,- that there is one lesson of hers that we have learned by heart, and would repeat now when we meet her at our own festival; it is, "To give honor to those who in their high office do honor to her,"-President Quincy, amid enthusiastic greetings, immediately replied: "It is n't quite fair, gentlemen; it is n't quite fair. When I received your invitation, I had great doubts on the subject of accepting it; for I saw very plainly that if I did, by some hook or crook, I should be set up for a speech; and I felt like giving myself the same advice that Swift gave to the man. Said the man, I have set up for a wit.' 'Well,' replied Swift, 'I would now advise you to sit down.' But I thought that I had laid an anchor to the windward; that I was not to be assailed by toast or sentiment, and that no machinery of any kind would be set to work here to rasp speeches out of dry and reluctant natures. But, gentlemen, I belong to a past age, and you should no more expect a man of three-score and ten to make an after-dinner speech than to dance a hornpipe. Nature is against you; for, to make a good after-dinner speech, many things are required which an old man has not. Such a

sus.

speech should be witty as well as wise; and, with an abundance of imagination, it should have a sprinkling of salt- the pure Attic. It should be strewn with roses, such as are grown on the sides of ParnasThere should be alternate layers of the utile and the dulce, and on the top of all these should be a layer of sugared sentiment. Gentlemen, it is impossible that an old man can compound anything like this, for he is deficient in the two great requisites, memory and fancy. To an old man, memory is an arrant jade, and she is no way delicate in letting him know that, like the rest of her sex, she gives young men the preference. An old man's fancy will neither run nor walk; and still less can it fly, for there is not a pin-feather in its wings. Besides, gentlemen, it is a universal rule, that when a son has set up for himself in the world, and is doing a pretty good business, it is time for the father to retire, lest his presence may give rise to unpleasant comparisons. For to say that the young man beats the old man, would be cruel; and to say, as in this case I fear it cannot be said, the old man beats the young man, would be anything but complimentary." After a round of witty remarks, President Quincy said, "I will detain you no longer, but conclude by giving you a toast, if my treacherous memory will so far serve me. I will give you, Genius-inHere, however, the venerable president's memory did desert him; and, after

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 me, 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 thing werry 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 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 station, 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