REPORT OF THE COUNCIL. 



The Academy has lost eight members by death since the last 

 report of the Council, May 11, lOO-t : four Resident Fellows, 

 James M. Barnard, Samuel L. Abbot, George F. Hoar, and 

 George S. Boutwell ; four Associate Fellows, T. M. Drown, 

 A. S. Packard, James C. Carter, and L. P. di Cesnola. 



One Resident Fellow has resigned during the year. 



No new members have been elected. 



The roll of the Academy now includes 194 Resident Fellows, 

 96 Associate Fellows, and 73 Foreign Honorary Members. 



GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. 



I BELIEVE it is Howells who somewhere remarks that one may easily 

 hear two Bostonians at a club discussing a third person with the greatest 

 freedom, after which one may be heard casually lemarking to the other, 

 " He is a cousin of mine." I might truly say the same either of Senator 

 Hoar or of Senator Lodge, both of whom were descended from Francis 

 Higginsou, the early Salem clergyman. In case of Senator Hoar, I was 

 some six years older and knew him first as a boy in college, he reach- 

 ing Harvard College as I left ; then I knew him as a young lawyer in 

 Worcester, where we were fellow townsmen for a dozen years or so, and 

 finally encountered him in relation to public questions, where we alter- 

 nately agreed and differed for many years. The fact that some months 

 have gone by since his funeral diminishes the peril of that merely good- 

 natured praise which is the general instinct of our friendly nation when a- 

 prominent man passes^ away. Happening to be in England during the 

 exciting days which followed the murder of President McKiuley, I was 

 constantly called on to explain how it was that the repeated criticism 

 made upon him in America up to that time was so instantly followed by 

 a chorus of what seemed rather undiscriminating praise, and I could only 

 say that such was our American temperament that with us the applause 

 came first and the more discriminating criticism afterwards. 



George Frisbie Hoar was born at Concord, Mass., August 29, 1826, 

 being the son of Samuel Hoar, a prominent lawyer, who was a Whig mem- 



