February 13.—Meeting of the New England Historical Genealogical Society, President Wilder in the chair. The historiographer announced the decease of members, of which information had been received, viz.: Ashael Woodward, M.D., at Franklin, Conn., December 30, 1885; Ariel Low, at Boston, January 5, 1886; Nahum Capen, LL.D., at Dorchester, January 8; Francis Walker Bacon, at Boston, January 17; Edmund Batchelder Dearborn, at Boston, January 22; Henry Perkins Kidder, at New York, January 28. The corresponding secretary made a statement as to some of the more valuable gifts of books for the month, the donation of chief value being a full set of Force's "American Archives," from the Hon. M. P. Wilder. The secretary, the Rev. Mr. Slafter, also made a statement concerning the proposition recently made by Mr. Benjamin F. Stevens, an antiquarian of local celebrity, formerly resident in Vermont, but now in England. He has made a collection of titles of manuscripts relating to American affairs during the period from 1772 to 1784, which manuscripts are in the government archives of England, France, Holland, and Spain, and number 80,000 or more. Many of them are of the first historical importance, and have never been published. The proposition is that Congress shall be induced to take some measures for the printing of these indexes and the more important of the manuscripts. The society, on Mr. Slafter's motion, adopted a resolution in favor of the project, and appointed a committee to coöperate with other committees or societies in urging the matter at Washington. Mr. Slafter declined being chairman of the committee, and it was made up as follows: Abner C. Goodell, John Ward Dean, Albert H. Hoyt, Edmund F. Slafter, and Charles L. Flint. The historical essay of the session was read by Mr. S. Brainard Pratt, of Boston, and its subject was "The Bible in New England." In referring to the use of the Bible in the Sunday service, by reading of selections therefrom, he said this was for a long time resisted. The first reading of the kind was in the Brattle-street Church, in Boston, in 1699, and it was regarded as an audacious innovation, as savoring of Presbyterianism, and being but little better than Episcopalianism in disguise. The next church to adopt the practice was that of South Reading, in 1645, and the next was in 1669, when the Old South Church, in Boston, took up with it. The progress of the movement was very slow, as is indicated by these facts, and the fact that in the South Parish Church, of Ipswich, there was no reading of Scripture, as a part of the service, until the year 1826. The essayist said there have been 326 versions, of varying editions, of the New and Old Testaments, or both, published in New England, namely: In Rhode Island, 1; Maine, 12; Vermont, 18; New Hampshire, 25; Connecticut, 83; Massachusetts, 187. There yet remains one in manuscript, of great interest, which the enterprise and wealth of Boston have never yet given to the world in type. That is the version prepared by Cotton Mather, and the manuscript of which is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
February 13-16.—Floods did great damage in Boston and other places in Eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
NECROLOGY.
January 16.—Death of Henry W. Hudson, LL.D., at Cambridge, from exhaustion following a slight surgical operation. He was one of the most noted Shaksperian scholars in the world. He was born in Cornwall, Vt., January 28, 1814. His early life was, like that of so many other Green Mountain boys, one of poverty, struggle for a livelihood and an education, till finally he had gained his much-coveted collegiate training, and began life as a teacher in the South. He became interested in Shakspere, studying the plays with only the slight aids then within his reach. Almost immediately he fell to work upon his critical analysis of the dramatist, which he delivered in the form of lectures at Huntsville, and afterwards at Mobile and Cincinnati. In the fall of 1844 he came to Boston, and was constantly engaged in delivering his Shaksperian lectures, during the following winter, in Boston and the chief neighboring cities. The succeeding year they were repeated in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. George S. Hillard, Theodore Parker, Dr. Chandler Robbins, and Mr. Emerson became deeply interested in him. His lectures were first published in 1848, and were dedicated to Richard H. Dana. Mr. Hudson was admitted to the diaconate in the Episcopal Church by Bishop Whittingham, in Trinity Church, New York, in 1849. He was still more or less engaged in literary pursuits, and in 1852 became and continued for nearly three years the editor of the Churchman, a weekly religious journal then published in New York. Subsequently he originated the Church Monthly, which he edited a year or two. His only parochial charge has been that of St. Michael's, Litchfield, Conn., assumed in 1858 and retained until 1860. It was in 1851 that his first edition of "Shakspere's Plays" appeared, in eleven volumes, after the form and style of the Chiswick edition of 1826. In 1852 he married Miss Emily S. Bright, daughter of Henry Bright, of Northampton. In 1862 he became chaplain in the New York Volunteer Engineers. From 1865 Mr. Hudson lived principally in Cambridge, frequently officiating in parish churches on Sundays, but principally devoting himself to the teaching of Shakspere and other English authors, in Boston and the immediate neighborhood. He was for a long time a lecturer on English literature at the Boston University. A few years ago he received the degree of LL.D., from Middlebury College. For two years he was the editor of the Saturday Evening Gazette. In 1870 Messrs. Ginn & Heath became his publishers, and brought out his "School Shakspere" in three volumes, containing seven plays each. In 1872 he put into two volumes the substance of his earlier volumes on "Shakspere's Characters," revising, condensing, rewriting his earlier work, parts of which he had outgrown, and presenting his final opinions, under the title of Shakspere's "Life, Art, and Characters," which he dedicated to his friend, Mr. Joseph Burnett, of Southboro'. It is but a few years since his "Harvard Shakspere" was brought out.
January 17.—Death of the Hon. Hosea Doton, of Woodstock, Vt., aged seventy-four. He was a man of wide reputation as a mathematician and civil engineer, and had long been in correspondence with leading scientists in different parts of the country. His work in determining altitudes of Vermont mountains is accepted as authority. For thirty-eight years he made astronomical calculations for the Vermont Register, also many years for the New Hampshire Register, and had long kept a meteorological record for the Smithsonian Institute.