One of these was a grand dinner with the Maryland Historical Society at Baltimore, May 13, 1851, my late friend Mr. Kennedy in the chair as president, while Sir Henry Bulwer and myself supported him right and left, some hundreds of other guests also being present.  Of course all was very well done, luxuriously and magnificently; but perhaps the best thing I can do (if my reader’s patience and my present tired penmanship will approve it) is to extract from a newspaper, the Baltimore Clipper of the above date, a precis of my speech on the occasion.  Some distinguished gentleman having proposed my health,—­“This brought to his feet Mr. Tupper, who, having expressed his thanks in an appropriate manner, and acknowledged his superior gratitude to the Author of all good, alluded to that international loving-kindness which he avowed to be one main errand of his life; and he very happily brought in Horace’s prophetical description of England and America in their relation of mother and child, ‘O matre pulchra filia pulchrior.’  He followed by relating some striking incidents of the good feeling which pervades the old country in favour of her illustrious offspring.  One we cannot fail to give was that the Royal Naval School at Greenwich had inserted his well-known ballad ‘To Brother Jonathan’ in a collection published for the use of the Royal Navy.  The speaker then paid an eloquent compliment to the literature of America—­her poets, statesmen, historians, and divines.  He rejoiced that ‘Insular America and Continental England’ were so intimately and inseparably intermingled in the authorial productions of the human mind, as well as bound together by the strongest ties of nature and religion, of lineage, laws, and language.  Adverting to the wise piety of such associations as the one before him, he exhorted to keep together the records of the past, that they may sanctify the present and be an encouragement to good and a warning against evil for the future.  He commented severely upon the vandal act of the British troops under General Ross in burning the national archives at Washington.  In this connection he introduced the beautiful lines from Milton:—­

    ’Lift not thy spear against the Muse’s bower;
    The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
    The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
    Went to the ground.’

In conclusion, Mr. Tupper related an interesting fact, which in his mind suggested what should be to Americans a pleasing idea—­possibly a discovery—­as to the origin of the national flag.  On making a pilgrimage just lately to Mount Vernon, he was forcibly struck by the circumstance that the ancient family coat-of-arms of the illustrious Washington consisted of three stars in the upper portion of the shield, and three stripes below; the crest represented an eagle’s head, and the motto was singularly appropriate to American history, ‘Exitus acta probat.’  Mr. Tupper said he could not but consider this a most