The visitor to the Massachusetts State-House may see, hanging in its
Senate-Chamber, tolerably well preserved on its canvas, what is
believed, on trustworthy evidence, to be Vandyck's own painting of
Winthrop. Another portrait of him--not so agreeable to the eye, nor so
faithful, we are sure, to the original, yet reputed to date from the
lifetime of its subject--hangs in the Hall of the American Antiquarian
Society at Worcester. Those of our readers who have not lovingly pored
and paused over Mr. Savage's elaborately illustrated edition of Governor
Winthrop's Journal do not know what a profitable pleasure invites them,
whenever they shall have grace to avail themselves of it. But who that
knows John Winthrop through such materials of memory and such fruits of
high and noble service as up to this time have been accessible and
extant here has not longed for, and will not most heartily welcome, a
new contribution, coming by surprise, unlooked for, unhoped for even,
but yielding, from the very fountain-head, the means of a most intimate
converse with him in that period of his life till now wholly unrecorded
for us? We had known his character as displayed here. We have now a most
authentic and complete development of the process by which that
character was moulded and built abroad. The President of the
Massachusetts Historical Society has been privileged to do a service
which, with most rare felicity, embraces his indebtedness to his own
good name, to his official place, and to the city and State which have
invested him with so many of their highest honors.

The Honorable Robert C. Winthrop, a descendant in the seventh generation
from our honored First Governor, seizing upon a brief vacation-interval
in the course of his high public service, made a visit to England in the
summer of 1847. He was naturally drawn towards his ancestral home at
Groton, in Suffolk. The borough itself, with its own due share of
historic interest, from men of mark and their deeds, is composed of one