448 EDMUND QUINCY. 



SO prominent a part. Nowhere else is it so minutely and faithfully told. 

 In addition to this, he was regularly called upon to furnish reports of 

 proceedings of public meetings, addresses, speeches, and, last but not 

 least, a share in the production of those New Yeai-'s Annuals, so taste- 

 fully prepared both inside and out, and made attractive not less to the 

 mind, than to the outward eye, which contributed in no small degree 

 to keep up a general interest in the great cause and to hasten its final 

 triumph. 



That hour came at last: the great object of emancipation was at- 

 tained after a conflict of nearly half a century, and not without a 

 fearful penalty of bloodshed. Little remained for him beyond the com- 

 paratively light labor of securing results vmder the strongest jjossible 

 cohesion of liberty with law. Mr. Quincy, had he so chosen, might 

 justly claim a complete release from controversy of every kind, and 

 especially from the ever-recurring demands of political news})apers. 

 He did, in fact, turn his hand in a different direction, and, instead of 

 laboring to establish present or future history, he directed his attention 

 to the illustration of the past. 



One special duty rested upon him, to perform which was a task 

 nobody else could do so well. His father, Josiah Quincy, and John 

 Copley, two of the most eminent men of their age, were born in the 

 same town of Boston so nearly together as to have been nursed by 

 the same nurse ; and, though soon widely separated by the Atlantic 

 in their respective paths of usefulness, they had the singular fortune 

 of each extending a useful and honorable career close upon an entire 

 century. While Quincy labored through many of the various stages 

 of active life, in the representative halls, on the bench of justice, in 

 the organization of his native place as a city, and lastly in the faithful 

 supervision of one of the first universities in the land, it fell to the lot 

 of his rival to rise by regular degrees through all the various stages 

 of distinction that attend an eminent parliamentary orator until ele- 

 vated to the highest judicial position which Great Britain could give. 

 A singular feature of this conjunction was that these two persons not 

 only should have been so close together at birth, but that they should 

 have continued their laborious and useful lives almost to the same 

 day of termination. Mr. Quincy was the survivor but a few weeks. 

 It was no more than an act of justice in his son to show to the public 

 an example of so long, so industrious, and so useful a career. It 

 scarcely needs to be added that it was so judiciously done as to secure 

 for it shortly a second edition, an event seldom attending any produc- 

 tion of that sort not possessing intrinsic worth. 



