sition of his difficulties with them, which finally terminated in the retirement of Pickering and McHenry.* Once more, we apprehend that, in the case of the Cunningham Letters,t - which are wisely suppressed, the true question is not whether they were confidential, but whether one gentleman should have thus written to another; for it is the matter and the temper which are objectionable. And, lastly, the calm and reflecting, who are acquainted with the history of our national parties, will hardly be pleased with the account of the reasons which induced Mr. Adams to identify himself with his "ancient enemies," after the fall of the Federal party. If, in these several strictures, we have spoken frankly, we have meant kindly, simply because we know something of the difficulties which beset the path of the biographer who is on his guard at every step.

We add a single word of dissent from Mr. Charles Francis Adams's course as editor, and that is, to express our regret at the republication of any part of the papers which appeared originally, in 1809, in the Boston Patriot, and at the omission of the Letters of John Adams to his Wife. The latter might have been included in the Works, had the former been excluded, and had the number of pages in the several volumes been made more nearly uniform. The elements of social disorder, and the laxity of morals as regards marriage which prevail, ought to be met and rebuked in every form of discourse. We will not aver that the delinquencies of some eminent persons have aided to produce this state of things; but we do say that these Letters, as showing the domestic character of a great man, as manifesting his deep, undying love for the partner of his bosom, as overflowings of a heart constantly yearning for his children and for his home, as a record of the private life of a statesman who kept himself uncontaminate during years of absence, and who, in his relations of husband and father, always had reference to the will and ordinance of Almighty God, should have found a place in this collection of his writings.

*See Vol. I. pp. 551 - 558.

t See Vol. I. pp. 628, 629.

See Vol. I. pp. 610, 613.

With these general remarks, we proceed to notice the volumes before us somewhat in detail. It suits our purpose best to refer to the Life incidentally, and, as occasion may require, in connection with the Works. Of the second and third volumes, which we shall consider together, an analysis here is impracticable. In the form chiefly of a Diary and fragmentary Autobiography, they contain a little of almost everything, thoughts on religion and politics, on self-examination and self-improvement; notes of debates in Congress, and of Mr. Adams's own doings there and elsewhere; memoranda of voyages and journeys, of the negotiation of treaties, of visits to nobles and statesmen, and to towns and cities; sketches of distinguished persons with whom he associated; at times a pleasant story, and as much gossip even as there is in Walpole's Letters. We have, besides, an outline of the celebrated argument of Otis in the case of the Writs of Assistance; notes of Mr. Adams's own argument in defence of Corbet and others, charged with the murder of Lieutenant Panton on the high seas; the original draught of the Declaration of Rights and and Grievances, made by the Congress of 1774, which is justly considered one of the most important documents of the Revolutionary era; notes of the debate in the Senate, in 1789, on the power of the President to remove public officers at pleasure, which power, then affirmed by Mr. Adams's own casting vote as Vice-President, has been exercised ever since; several essays and controversial papers of the Revolution, and among them the earliest of Mr. Adams's known printed productions, which, as the editor remarks, "bear the peculiar mental and moral characteristics of the author"; and lastly, a paper in the handwriting of Jefferson, indorsed by Washington, "Construction of the powers of the Senate with respect to their agency in appointing ambassadors, &c., and fixing the grade." Such is a rapid view of more than eleven hundred pages.

It

The Diary, from 1755 to 1761, is printed, we are told, from loose fragments—mere scraps of paper-hardly legible. opens, at the age of twenty, with a notice of the earthquake which, memorable here, in Europe destroyed much of the city of Lisbon, a significant entry, we thought, as it first met our

eye, for the youth who was to become a principal instrument in causing the British empire "to rock and reel and crack, as if it would fall in ruins about us," as then, he says, his father's house at Braintree seemed to do.

We soon meet with evidence of his thirst for knowledge, coupled with the sad remark, that, without books,* time, or friends, he must "be contented to live and die an ignorant, obscure fellow"; but those around him who, at this early period, heard his appreciative comments on Milton's great epic, and saw him engaged in the study of Butler's Analogy, entertained, very likely, quite a different opinion. Early, too, we see traces of ambition. While wielding the teacher's birch and ferule at Worcester, then a country town of fifteen hundred people, he sometimes thought himself in his "great chair" a dictator at the head of a commonwealth, and in the urchins before him fancied that he saw "renowned generals but three feet high, and deep projecting politicians in petticoats," and that his little dominion, "like the great world, was made up of kings, politicians, divines, L. D.'s, fops, buffoons, fiddlers, sycophants, fools, coxcombs, chimney-sweepers, and every other character drawn in history." So, in 1759, he wrote: "I talk to Samuel Quincy about resolution, and being a great man, . . . . . which makes him laugh." And again: "Reputation ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and aim of my behavior." And at the age of twenty-three: "Let love and vanity be extinguished, and the great passions of ambition, patriotism, break out and burn. Let little objects be neglected and forgot, and great ones engross, arouse, and exalt my soul."

66

Abandoning the plan of entering the ministry, which at one time he seems to have seriously entertained, he became a student in the law office of James Putnam, of Worcester. This gentleman, as the Revolutionary controversy came to blows, adhered to the royal side, and died in banishment. When we mingled in British colonial circles, we used to hear it said that he was the ablest lawyer in all America. We have often stood at his grave, and thought of the strange vicissitudes of

* In 1774, he said that he had "spent an estate in books."

human condition, by which the master, a giant in his profession, yet became an outlaw and an exile, broken in fortune and in spirit, while his struggling and almost friendless pupil, elevated step by step by the very same course of events, was finally known the world over as the chief magistrate of a nation.

Of the seventeen years for which Mr. Adams was at the bar, the Diary is rich in incident; but our limits forbid more than a glance at a page or two. It is at once amusing and instructive to mark the agony of the young lawyer about his first writ, which was "abated," the disposition to accuse Mr. Putnam's remissness in duty as the cause of his disgrace, and the query, whether "Bob Paine don't pick up this story to laugh at"; and his account of the "scene of absolute confusion in the court in which he was counsel in a case about "an old horse,"-"the parties raging and scolding," "all the spectators smiling, whispering," &c., - his own "oversights, omissions, inexpert management," — and the result, had he pursued a course more in conformity with what his client had told him. In like manner, we find again, in 1760, his self-condemnation, that his "inattention to law is intolerable and ruinous"; and a year later, "Last Monday had a passionate wrangle with Eben Thayer," before a justice. "He called me a petty lawyer. This I resented."

But there came a change. At the age of thirty-two, such was the position he had attained, that Hancock, prosecuted by the crown for violation of the navigation and trade laws, to recover penalties, amounting, in the various suits, to more than four hundred thousand dollars, employed him as counsel and advocate. In 1770, Whig though he was, and in defiance of the popular sentiment, he appeared to defend Preston and the British soldiers for their agency in what is absurdly called the "Boston Massacre"; and he thus appeared, on the ground that, in a free country, every man whose life is at stake should be allowed legal aid of his own choice, and that, if his servicés were necessary to a fair trial of the accused, he could not, as a member of the bar, decline. The part he took in this affair was severely censured; but he himself never ceased to congratulate himself and the country that he possessed the

courage to do his duty, and to say of the result of the trial, that, "as the evidence was, the verdict"—of acquittal-" of the jury was exactly right."

His professional reputation at this time was all that he could desire, and his own belief was that no man in Massachusetts had a larger business. Chosen a Representative to the General Court from Boston, he went to Faneuil Hall, and accepted the trust, he says, with the feeling that he devoted his family to ruin, and himself to death. At home, in the evening, he gave expression to his apprehensions to his wife, who burst into a flood of tears, and said that, though there was danger in his decision, she thought he had done right, and that "she was very willing to share in all that was to come, and to place her trust in Providence." The service was only for a year, and at its close he returned to the bar. But the destiny of John and Abigail Adams was fixed in that hour of sad foreboding and weeping.

*

In 1772 we have in the Diary a significant record: "This day I heard that Mr. Hancock had purchased twenty writs for this court of Mr. S. Quincy.† Oh, the mutability of the legal, commercial, social, political, as well as material world! For about three or four years I have done all Mr. Hancock's business, and have waded through wearisome, anxious days and nights, in his defence; but farewell!" Extensive as was Mr. Adams's practice, it was not lucrative, and he doubted whether any lawyer ever did so much for so little profit. We do not find him embarked in politics a second time, save as a counsellor and adviser of the recognized Whig leaders, until after the destruction of the tea and the departure of Hutchinson. That one so earnest, so intrepid, and so well fitted to mingle in the contests of the day, should have come upon the scene of action so late, is a remarkable fact. Nor, at the mature age of thirty-nine, would he probably have been appointed to serve

* Mr. Adams, in 1809, in a letter to Dr. Rush, states the conduct of his wife in a still more favorable light. This noble woman, he remarked, " burst into tears, but instantly cried out in a transport of magnanimity, 'Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined.”

† A Loyalist or Tory lawyer, who was afterwards proscribed and banished. His brother Josiah, father of the present Hon. Josiah Quincy of Boston, was a Whig, and one of the purest men of the time.