not accept a present, for his Bible taught him what experience continually enforced, that a gift blinds the eyes of wise men and perverts their judgment. While at St. Petersburg, the Russian Minister of the Interior, then an old man, felt uneasy on account of the presents accepted during his official service, and, calculating the value of all gifts received, returned it to the imperial treasury. This fact made an impression on Mr. Adams, and led to a resolution which he faithfully kept. When a bookseller sent him a costly Bible, he kept the book, but paid its full value. No bribes, no pensions in any form, ever soiled justice in his hands. He would never be indebted to any body of men, lest they might afterwards sway him from the right path.

Because he was a conscientious man he would never be the servant of a party, and never was. It was of great advantage to him that he was absent while the two great parties were forming in the United States. He came into the Massachusetts Legislature as a federalist, but some anti-federalists also voted for him. His first vote showed he was not limited by the common principles of a party. He was chosen to the Senate of the United States, not by a party vote. At first he acted mainly with the federalists, though not always voting with his colleague, but in 1807 acted with the administration in the matter of the Embargo. This was the eventful crisis of his life; this change in his politics, while it gave him station and political power, yet brought upon him the indignation of his former friends; it has never been forgotten nor forgiven. Be the outward occasion and inward motive what they may, this led to the sundering of friendships long cherished and deservedly dear; it produced the most bitter experience of his life. Political men would naturally undertake to judge his counsel by its probable and obvious consequences the favor of the executive - rather than attribute it to any latent motive of patriotism in his heart.

While at the head of the nation he would not be the President of a Party, but of the People; when he became a Representative in Congress he was not the delegate of a party, but of Justice and the eternal Right, giving his constituents an assurance that he would hold himself in allegiance to no party, national or political. He has often been accused of hatred to the South: I can find no trace of it. "I entered Congress," says he, "without one sentiment of discrimination between the North and South." At first he acted with Mr. Jackson, to

arrest the progress of nullification, for the democracy of South Carolina was putting in practice what the federalists of New England have so often been alleged to have held in theory, and condemned on that allegation. Here he was consistent. In 1834, he approved the spirit of the same presi dent in demanding justice of France; but afterwards he did not hesitate to oppose, and perhaps abuse him.

He had a high reverence for religion; none of our public men more. He aimed to be a Christian man. Signs of this have often been sought in his habits of church-going, of reading the Bible, they may be found rather in the general rectitude of his life, public and private, and in the high motives which swayed him, in his opposition to slavery, in the self-denial which cost him his reëlection. In his public acts he seems animated by the thought that he stood in the presence of God. Though rather unphilosophical in his theology, resting to a great degree on the authority of tradition and the letter, and attaching much value to forms and times, he yet saw the peculiar excellence of Christianity,― that it recognized "Love as the paramount and transcendent Law of human nature." I do not say that his life indicates the attainment of a complete religious repose, but that he earnestly and continually labored to achieve that. You shall find few statesmen, few men, who act with a more continual and obvious reference to religion as a motive, as a guide, as a comfort. He was, however, no sectarian. His devotion to freedom appeared where it seldom appears-in his notions about religion. He thought for himself, and had a theology of his own, rather old-fashioned, it is true, and not very philosophical or consistent, it may be and in that he was not very singular — but he allowed others to think also for themselves, and have a theology of their own. Mr. Adams was a Unitarian. It is no great merit to be a Unitarian, or a Calvinist, or a Catholic, perhaps no more merit to be one than the other. But he was not ashamed of his belief when Unitarianism was little, despised, mocked at, and called "infidelity" on all sides. When the Unitarian church at Washington, a small and feeble body, met for worship in an upper room-not large, but obscure, over a public bathing-house-John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State and expecting to be President, came regularly to worship with them. It was not fashionable; it was hardly respectable, for the Unitarians were not then, as numerous and rich: but he went and worshipped. It

now,

was no merit to think with any sect, it was a great merit to dare be true to his convictions. In his theology, as in politics, he feared not to stand in a minority. If there ever was an American who loved the praise of God more than the praise of men, I believe Mr. Adams was one.

His devotion to freedom, his love of his country, his conscientiousness, his religion, are four things strong and noticea ble in his character. You shall look long amongst our famous men before you find his equal in these things.*

Somebody says, no man ever used all his intellectual faculties as far as possible. If any man is an exception to this rule, it is Mr. Adams. He was temperate and diligent; industrious almost to a fault, though not orderly or systematic. His diplomatic letters, his orations, his reports and speeches, all indicate wide learning, the fruit of the most remarkable diligence. The attainments of a well-bred scholar are not often found in the American Congress, or the President's house. Yet he never gives proof that he had the mind of a great man. In his special department of politics he does not appear as a master. He has no great ideas with which to solve the riddles of commerce and finance; has done little to settle the commercial problems of the world, for that work there is needed not only a retrospective acquaintance with the habits and history of men, but the foresight which comes from a knowledge of the nature of things and of man. His chief intellectual excellence seems to have been Memory; his great moral merit, a conscientious and firm Honesty; his practical strength lay in his Diligence. His counsels seem almost always to have come from a knowledge of human history, seldom to have been prompted by a knowledge of the nature of Hence he was a critic of the past, or an administrator of the present, rather than a prophetic guide for the future. He had many facts and precedents, but few ideas. Few examples of great political foresight can be quoted from his life; and therein to his honor be it spoken-his heart seems to have

man.

Mr.

*In a public address, Mr. Adams once quoted the well-known words of Tacitus, Annal VI., 39, - Par negotiis neque supra,- applying them to a distinguished man lately deceased. A lady wrote to inquire whence they came. Adams informed her, and added, they could not be adequately translated in less than seven words in English. The lady replied that they might be well translated in five Equal to not above duty, but better in three - JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

outtravelled his head. The public affairs of the United States seem generally to be conducted by many men of moderate abilities, rather than by a few men of great genius for politics.

Mr. Adams wrote much. Some of his works are remarkable for their beauty, for the graceful proportions of their style, and the felicity of their decoration. Such are his celebrated lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, which are sufficiently learned and sagacious, not very philosophical, but written in an agreeable style, and at the present day not wholly without value. His review of the works of Fisher Ames-I speak only of the rhetoricis, perhaps, the finest of his composi tions. Some of his productions are disorderly, ill-compacted, without "joints or contexture," and homely to a fault: this oration is a growth out of a central thought, marked by an internal harmony; that, a composition, a piece of carpentry distinguished by only an outward symmetry of members; others are neither growth nor composition, only a mass of materials huddled and lumped together. Most of his later productions, with the exception of his congressional speeches, are hard, cold, and unfinished performances, with little order in the thoughts, and less beauty in the expression. His extemporaneous speeches have more of both; they are better finished than his studied orations. He could judge and speak with fury, though he wrote with phlegm. His illustrations are usually drawn from literature, not from nature or human life; his language is commonly cold, derived from the Roman stream which has been filtered through books, rather than from the deep and original well of our Saxon home. His published letters are compact, written in a cold style, without playfulness or wit, with no elegance, and though mostly business letters, they are not remarkable for strength or distinctness. His diligence appears in verse as well as prose. He wrote much that rhymed tolerably; little that was poetical. The same absence of nature, the same coldness and lack of inspiration, mark his poetry and prose. But in all that he wrote, with the exceptions mentioned above, though you miss the genial warmth, the lofty thought, the mind that attracts, embraces, warms, and inspires the reader, you find always a spirit of Humanity, of Justice, and Love to God.

Mr. Adams was seldom eloquent. Eloquence is no great gift. It has its place among subordinate powers, not among the chief. Alas for the statesman or the preacher who has

only that to save the State withal! Washington had none of it, yet how he ruled the land! No man in America has ever had a political influence so wide and permanent as Mr. Jefferson; yet he was a very indifferent writer, and never made a speech of any value. The Acts of Washington, the Ideas of Jefferson, made eloquence superfluous, True, it has its value: if a man have at command the electricity of Truth, Justice, Love, the sentiments and great ideas thereof, it is a good thing to be able with Olympian hand to condense that electric fire into bolted eloquence; to thunder and lighten in the sky. But if a man have that electric Truth it matters little whether it is Moses that speaks, or only Aaron; whether or not Paul's bodily presence be weak and his speech contemptible, it is Moses' thought which thunders and lightens out of Sinai; it is Paul's idea that is powerful and builds up the church. Of true eloquence, the best thoughts put in the best words, and uttered in the best form, Mr. Adams had little, and that appeared mainly in the latter part of his life. Hundreds have more. What passes for eloquence is common in America, where the public mouth is always a-going. His early orations are poor in their substance and faulty in their form; his ability as an orator developed late; no proofs of it appear before he entered the House of Representatives, at a good old age. his manner of speaking there was little dignity and no grace, though sometimes there was a terrible energy and fire. He was often a powerful speaker-by his facts and figures, by his knowledge, his fame, his age, and his position, but most of all by his independent character. He spoke worthily of great men, of Madison or Lafayette, kindling with his theme, and laying aside all littleness of a party. However, he was most earnest and most eloquent not when he stood up the champion of a neglected truth, not when he dwelt on great men now venerable to us all, but when he gathered his strength to attack a foe. Incensed, his sarcasm was terrific; colossal vanity aspiring to be a Ghenghis Khan, at the touch of that Ithuriel spear shrank to the dimensions of Tom Thumb. His invective is his masterpiece of oratoric skill. It is sad to say this, and to remember, that the greatest works of ancient or of modern rhetoric, from the thundering Philippics of Demosthenes down to the sarcastic and crazy rattle of Lord Brougham, are all of the same character, are efforts against a personal foe! Men find hitherto the ablest acts and speech in the same cause, not positive and creating, but critical and combative-in war.

In