JOHN AMORY LOWELL. 409 



soon after the decease of his father, the Hon. John Lowell, first judge 

 of the United States District Court of Massachusetts, under a commis- 

 sion from Washington. This office is now held by his great grandson, 

 the eldest son of our deceased Associate, who has been a Fellow 

 since the year 1877, thus continuing the line from the very founda- 

 tion of the Academy, for Judge Lowell was one of the sixty-two 

 members incorporated by the charter in 1780. In tracing the gene- 

 alogy one step farther back, we come (as is almost universal in New 

 England families of note), upon a clergyman, the Rev. John Lowell, 

 of Newbury, a man of mark in his day. 



Mr. Lowell was the fourth of his family to be a member of the 

 Corporation of Harvard University, to which he gave a continuous 

 and most valuable service of forty years. He was for more than fifty 

 years one of the directors of the Suffolk Bank, which was chartered 

 in his time, and whicli early established a very useful plan for the 

 redemption of the currency of the New England banks in Boston. 

 Not to mention other important public trusts, — as of the Athenaeum, 

 of the Massachusetts General Hospital, of the Agricultural Trustees, 

 of the Provident Institution for Savings, to all of which he ren- 

 dered assiduous and wise service, — nor to refer here to the very 

 important part which he has taken for a lifetime in the development 

 of the manufacturing interests of Massachusetts, especially as prose- 

 cuted in the town which was named in commemoration of similar ser- 

 vices by his cousin, — we proceed to speak of that most important 

 " corporation sole " founded by that cousin, the Lowell Institute. 

 This trust was specifically consigned to our late Associate and to such 

 successor as he should appoint, — with preference to the family and 

 the name of Lowell, — subject to no other than a formal visitatorial 

 control, mainly for auditorship. And " to him, single and alone, it 

 fell to shape the whole policy and take the whole diiection of this 

 great educational foundation," the history of which for almost half a 

 century has justly been said to be a " record of his own intellectual 

 breadth and scope, as well as of his large administrative capacity." 

 We all know with what good judgment, with what liberality, and with 

 what success this peculiar trust has been administered, and how on 

 the one hand a series of most distinguished men have been attracted 

 into its service, while on the other the eflforts of younger men have 

 been stimulated and rewarded at the period when such encouragement 

 was most important to them. Suffice it to mention the names of Lyell 

 and Agassiz, — the former early and also a second time brought from 

 England for courses of lectures at the Lowell Institute, the latter 



