, 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