art was begun that, on the 25th of June, 1786, the subject of this notice, Lucius Manlius Sargent, was born. Here he lived until 1794, when the house was burnt down, and his father moved first to Fort Hill, and afterwards to the corner of Essex and Lincoln Streets.

Mr. Daniel Sargent must have been a rich man; for when he died in 1806, he left each of his six surviving children with at least a competency. He had been interested in the fisheries, and had had many dealings with the fishermen of the coast. After his death a package was found among his effects, with the following inscription: "Notes, due bills, and accounts against sundry persons along shore. Some of them may be got by suit or severe dunning: but the people are poor; most of them have had fisherman's luck. My children will do as they think best. Perhaps they will think with me, that it is best to burn the package entire." It is to the credit of Mr. Sargent's sons that they adopted his suggestion, and that all the contents of the package went into the fire. A list was first made of the evidences of debt thus destroyed, the amount exceeding thirty-two thousand dollars. The story of the occurrence and of the joy of one of the forgiven debtors is touchingly but anonymously told in the fifty-fifth number of "Dealings with the Dead."

Lucius Manlius Sargent went to several schools in Boston and its neighborhood, ending with the Phillips Academy at Exeter, where he remained about three years. He then entered Harvard College in the class that graduated in 1808. He left college, however, before finishing his course. He is described by a classmate as being at this time tall, handsomely proportioned, and very muscular, and as having a fine Roman cast of countenance. He was a good horseman, whether in the saddle or with the reins, a strong swimmer, and a good fencer with the broadsword. He was considered the best Latin scholar in college, and his witty sayings were quoted in

his class.

After leaving college Mr. Sargent studied law in the office of Mr. Samuel Dexter. He was admitted to the bar on the 14th of March, 1815, but he never practised.

Mr. Sargent married, on the 3d of April, 1816, Mary, daughter of Mr. Barnabas Binney, of Philadelphia. By her he had three children, Mary Turner, who died unmarried in 1841;

Horace Binney, afterwards Colonel Sargent, who is still living; and Manlius, who died in infancy. Mrs. Sargent died in 1824, and in 1825 Mr. Sargent married Sarah Cutter Dunn, daughter of Mr. Samuel Dunn, of Boston. Her only child was Lucius Manlius Sargent, who served his country in the late Civil War, first as a surgeon, and then as a captain of cavalry, and who was mortally wounded at Weldon on the 9th of December, 1864.

Mr. Sargent was elected a member of the New England Historic, Genealogical Society in 1850, and a Resident Member of this Society in 1856. He died on the 2d of June, 1867, in the eighty-first year of his age. His widow, one son, and seven grandchildren survived him.

Mr. Sargent's numerous writings first appeared in newspapers and magazines, but several of them have been collected and published in more permanent forms. A volume of verse from his pen appeared in 1813, under the title of "Hubert and Ellen, with other Poems." The style is flowing, the versification good; and what is more rare, the poems are eminently readable.

About twenty years after the publication of these poems Mr. Sargent became deeply interested in the temperance reform. He delivered numerous addresses on the subject, several of which have been published. About temperance in drinking few persons deeply interested can speak temperately. The evils of drunkenness are so great that a warm-hearted or excitable man who observes them loses his head, and is almost necessarily drawn into exaggeration. Mr. Sargent did not wholly escape this danger; but his addresses were pointed, clear, and eloquent. He wrote, moreover, a series of temperance tales, which passed through several editions, and which were so well thought of that a hundred thousand copies of one of them was printed for distribution by a gentleman of New York.

But the papers which are most interesting to this Society, and to which Mr. Sargent probably owed his election here, form a series which appeared in the "Transcript" from 1847 or 1848 to 1856, and which was published in the latter year in two volumes, with the title "Dealings with the Dead by a Sexton of the Old School." The book is made up of a hundred and sixty articles, or essays, full of archæology, criticism,

and anecdote. The author was unfortunate in the character which he assumed, and we read altogether too much in his pages of tombs, graves, cremation, and undertakers. But with all this there is much that is interesting, much that is instructive. In spite of the lugubrious title, the style of the work is sufficiently lively. As is natural with a book made up of articles from a newspaper, it is better to dip into the "Dealings" than to undertake to read them consecutively.

Mr. Sargent made few contributions to the Proceedings of this Society. Our Cabinet received from him a portrait of Governor Thomas Pownall, painted by Henry C. Pratt, from a mezzotint engraving.1

1 Proceedings, vol. v. p. 236.

MAY MEETING, 1887.

THE stated meeting was held on the 12th instant at three P. M., the chair being occupied by Dr. ELLIS.

The record of the previous meeting was read by the Recording Secretary.

The additions by gift to the Library were reported by the Librarian.

Ernst Curtius, of Berlin, was chosen an Honorary Member of the Society; and John A. Doyle, Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, was elected a Corresponding Member.

The PRESIDENT then said:

There has been put into my hands since I came into this hall the following Resolve, which has passed both branches of the Legislature, and now awaits the action of the Governor. I have been asked to bring it to the notice of the Society.

Resolve providing for the Erection of a Memorial to Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Jonas Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr. Resolved, That the Governor and Council be, and they are hereby, authorized and requested to cause to be erected in some public place in the city of Boston a suitable memorial or monument to the memory of Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Jonas Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr, who were killed by British soldiers in the streets of Boston, on the fifth day of March, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy, upon the occasion known as the "Boston Massacre; " also to cause suitable headstones to be placed at the graves of the said persons, where their locations can be ascertained, the amount to be expended under this resolve not to exceed ten thousand dollars.

The words "so-called," so generally used in connection with the lamentable incident which occurred in State Street, March 5, 1770, designating a "Massacre," are generally un derstood, when attached to a person or an event, as carrying with them the suggestion of mis-called, as supposititious, or apologetic. So that incident, when popularly spoken of as a

"so-called massacre," leaves us to infer that the word is not used with strict propriety. The incident, as an event in our history, is appropriately, if not adequately, commemorated by a bronze tablet on a building near the spot, and by a radiated pavement upon it where the victims fell. The Commonwealth has never as yet raised any monumental memorial of a person or of an event in its history. The Resolve proposes that the State Treasury should now, for the first time, pay its highest monumental honors to commemorate those victims. We may well pause upon that proposition. Who were those victims, and what made them victims?

The oppressive measures of the British Government at our Revolutionary period had engaged opposition here in two forms, the one of peaceful, earnest, patriotic protest and resistance by our wise and resolute popular leaders; the other of riots and mobs, resulting in the destruction of private property and in personal insults to officials. To overawe the latter, foreign soldiers had been stationed in the town, provoking by their presence and behavior the just indignation of the inhabitants. These hated agents of arbitrary measures of government, instead of securing good order and helping to suppress riots, were the exciting cause of new riots. In one of these a squad of the military, acting under the commands of their officers, were exasperated by the threats, gibes, insults, and missiles of a mob of these rioters, and discharged their guns into it in self-defence. Those who fell in this hap-hazard conflict came to be described as the victims of 66 a massacre.' The soldiers were indicted for murder. Notwithstanding the hot passions of the time, and the intensity of the indignation against them, they were defended in the judicial proceedings against them by two of the foremost patriots, and acquitted by a Massachusetts jury. The occasion was commemorated for several successive years by an oration condemning the presence and denouncing the wrong of a standing army in civil affairs in a time of peace.

Mr. WASHBURN remarked that, assuming the voice of scholars to be unanimous in the declaration that these men were not acting in the character of patriots, but of rioters, and "died as the fool dieth," he would call attention more. particularly to the parliamentary attitude of this question.