with wry face from that precious old cup, who can now tell?  Probably it ministered its more inviting contents to the elders of the successive generations in the family, while it was known by the younger members in their turn in connection with certain penalties for overeating and chills got from hard play.  While having the relic in hand, the other day, the prompting was irresistible to bring it close to the appropriate organ, to ascertain, if possible, what had been the predominant character of its contents.  But, faithful as the grave, it would reveal no secrets; having parted with all transient and artificial odors, it has resumed, as is most fitting, the smell of its parent earth.

The writer of that record accompanying the “Stone-Pot” with its “Silver Lydd” was Adam Winthrop, father of our Governor, and son of the last-mentioned Lord of Groton.  This third Adam Winthrop—­the sixth child of his father’s second wife, and the eleventh of his thirteen children—­was born in London, “in the street which is called Gracious,” (Grace-Church,) August 10, 1548.  Losing his father at the age of fourteen, he was early bred as a lawyer in London, but soon engaged in agricultural interests at Groton, to the lordship of which he acceded by a license of alienation from an elder brother.  There are sundry authentic relics and tokens of this good man which reveal to us those traits of his character, and those ways and influences of his domestic life, under the high-toned, yet most genial training of which his son was educated to the great enterprise Providence intended for him.  There are even poetical pieces extant which prove that Adam sought intercourse with the Muses by making advances on his own part, though we must confess that he does not appear to have been fairly met half-way by that capricious and fastidious sisterhood.  Many of his almanacs and diaries, with entries dating from 1595, and from which the author makes liberal and interesting transcripts in an Appendix, have been happily preserved, and have a grateful use to us.  They help us to reconstruct an old home, a pleasant one, in or near which three generations of a good stock lived together after the highest pattern of an orderly, exemplary, prospered, and pious household.  We infer from many significant trifles, that, while the old English comfort-loving, generous, and hospitable style prevailed there, the severer spirit of Puritanism had not attained ascendancy.  Intercourse with the metropolis, though embarrassed with conditions requiring some buffeting and hardship, was compensated by the zest of adventure, and it was frequent enough to quicken the minds and to add to the bodily comforts and refinements of the family.  Adam Winthrop must have been a fine specimen of the old English gentleman, with all of native polish which courtly experiences might or might not have given him, and with a simple, high-toned, upright, and neighborly spirit, which made him an apt and a faithful administrator of a great