Excerpt from Introductory Lecture to the Course on the Early History of Massachusetts: Members of the Massachusetts Historical Society

An Introductory Lecture, ray friends, like an overture to an oratorio or an opera, has, proverbially, a wide scope, and I shall avail myself, with your indulgence, of the largest privileges of my position. It is no affectation in me, however, to say to you at the outset, that I have little hope of satisfying even the reasonable requisitions of the service which has been assigned me. I am conscious, indeed, of coming here this evening to offer an apology, rather than to deliver an historical lecture. Most gladly would I have prepared myself to do something worthy of such an occasion, and of such an audience as I see before me. Most gladly would I have prepared myself, had it been in my power, to deliver something suitable to the position which I am called to occupy here, as the President of the old Historical Society of Massachusetts, the oldest historical society in our country, which, for more than three-quarters of a century, has devoted itself to the illustration of the Colonial history of New England, publishing more than forty volumes of invaluable historical materials, which ought to be in the library of every town and village of New England, but which, I am sorry to say, have had fewer patrons, or certainly fewer purchasers, than they deserved and needed.

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