332 Additional Notes. 



Their meetings at Boston are held in an apartment lately- 

 assigned for their accommodation in the new State House, 

 where also their library and museum are deposited. A cata- 

 logue of the books in the library is in preparation, and will 

 soon be published. It has been sometimes remarked that 

 this society has been in some degree languid in its operation, 

 and has not fully satisfied the public expectations. Whatever 

 justice there may be in such a remark, I shall not now at- 

 tempt to trace the source. There is evidently a want of ex- 

 citement; and the public ought to have candour enough to 

 take part of the blame to itself. I have the satisfaction, how- 

 ever, to observe, that there appears, of late, a renewed and 

 more lively attention among its members to the concerns of 

 the institution. I ought to have mentioned, among the libe- 

 ralities of the general court, the plates of the map of the com- 

 monwealth, which were given to the academy and to the his- 

 torical society. The donation has been accepted, and a 

 joint committee of the societies have lately sold the right of 

 impression for seven years for 600 dollars, to be paid to the 

 societies without any deduction. 



Note (L),page 1 85. — The pernicious tendency of many mo- 

 dern German publications has been often the subject of re- 

 mark within a few years past. That works of solid merit, which 

 cannot be too generally known and read, are every year pub- 

 lished in that country, is not denied ; but that a considerable 

 nufnber daily issues from the German presses, of a very dif- 

 ferent and most pestiferous character, can as little be doubted. 

 A late writer, in a memoir on this subject, makes the follow- 

 ing striking remarks. How far they are just or otherwise is 

 left to be determined by every reader. 



" After all, it may not be chimerical to suppose that the 

 general reception of the German writings, the universal pre- 

 valence of the German taste, and the love of the wild and 

 gloomy, are not to be accounted for from ordinary causes, 

 and have in them more weight and importance than are 



