CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 3 



Charles S. Br.vdley, J. Lewis Ddiax, and E. G. Hazard of Peacedale, Rhode Island. 



Zachariah Allen, of Providence. Henry L. Abbot, U. S. A. 



Henry A. Eowland of Baltimore. Albert N. Arnold of Pawtucket, Ehode Island. 



C. H. F. Peters of Clinton, New York. Thcmas Hill of Portland, Maine. 

 Eaphael Pumpelly of Xewport, Ehode Island. 



At one o'clock the company proceeded to the Old South Meeting House, where the 

 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, who had consented, on a few hours' notice, to deliver the 

 chief address, presided. Around him, on the platform, sat Professor William B. 

 Rogers, president of the Institute of Technology; the venerable Mark Hopkins of 

 Williamstown ; the Very Reverend the Dean of Chester, England ; Joseph Lovering, 

 the Vice-President, and other officers of the Academy. 



The Rev. Dr. Mark Hopkins invoked the blessing of Divine Providence upon the 

 occasion, and then followed the 



ADDRESS BY THE HOX. EGBERT C. WIXTHROP. 



We are here, ladies and gentlemen, to commemorate the hundredth anniversary 

 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The committee of arrangements, 

 whos©; organ I have the honor to be, have selected for our public exercises this ven- 

 erable meeting-house, in which not a few of those who founded our institution, a 

 hundred years ago, were accustomed to assemble for the worship of God; and in 

 which many more of them had often met, on most memorable occasions, to take counsel 

 for the defence of American liberty. It is the meeting-house, too, in which the govern- 

 ors and legislatures of our Commonwealth, for a long succession of years, and until a 

 somewhat recent period, have listened to their annual election sennon, on this very 

 day of the year, — the last Wednesday of May. Having been providentiall}^ spared 

 from the flames of the great Boston fire of 1872 — of the arrest of whose ravages in 

 this direction it stands as a landmark and a monument, — I had almost said as a brand 

 from the burning, — it has mainl}- owed its continued preservation to the pious and 

 patriotic efforts of the ladies of our city and vicinity ; and to them and their associ- 

 ates of our own sex we offer our grateful acknowledgments for the privilege of being 

 here to-day. 



But, my friends, this Old South meeting-house has an association for us, as an 

 Academy of Arts and Sciences, nearer and dearer than any of those to which I have 

 alluded. It was here, on this spot, in the old church edifice of this parish, that, with 

 a punctuality and a despatch which seemed to prefigure, as it certainly characterized, 



