likely idea that a suspicion might have attached to him as having come over to search for that treasure.  Little may he have imagined what thoughts may have distracted the reverence of some of his humble fellow-worshippers in Groton Church who whispered the nature of his errand one to another.  Our honored Governor and his son of Connecticut had been near a score of years on this soil before Charles I. was beheaded.  Mr. Savage informs us that he was once asked by a descendant of the father whether he had received before his death tidings of the execution of his old master.  The annotator is able to quote a letter from Roger Williams, “to his honored kind friend, Mr. John Winthrop at Nameag,” [New London,] lettered on the back, “Mr. Williams of ye high news about the king.”  This letter, conveying recent tidings, was dated at Narragansett, June 26, 1649, two months after the elder Winthrop had died in Boston.

It was but natural that even the absurdity of the tradition lingering around the traces of the Groton manor should have served, with other far more constraining inducements, to excite in the visitor a purpose to employ his first period of relief from official service in rendering an act of public as well as of private obligation to the memory of his progenitors,—­especially as there existed no adequate and extended biography, but only scattered and fragmentary memorials of them in our copious literary stores.  Happily for him, and surely to the highest gratification of those who were to be his readers, materials most abundant, and of the most authentic and self-revealing sort, in journals and letters, were attainable, to give to the work essentially the character of an autobiography, and that, too, of the most attractive cast.  A second visit of the author to England in 1859-60, and the most opportune reception of a large collection of original papers, preserved in another line of the Governor’s descendants, put his fortunate biographer in possession of the means for completing a work surpassed by no similar volume known to us in the gracious attractions and in the substantial interest of its contents.  The book may safely rely for its due reception upon the noble character, complete and harmonious in all the virtues, and upon the eminent public services, of its subject.  It has other strong recommendations, affording, in style, method, and spirit, a model for books of the same class, and embracing all those paramount qualities of thoroughness, research, accuracy, good taste, incidental illustration, and, above all, an appreciative spirit, which stamp the worth of such labors.