in her father's house at Weymouth, the next town to this, and by her father, who was a clergyman.

66

13. I have had three sons and a daughter.

14. Your 14th query would require twenty volumes.

"15. My temper in general has been tranquil, except when any instance of extraordinary madness, deceit, hypocrisy, ingratitude, treachery, or perfidy, has suddenly struck me. Then I have always been irascible enough, and in three or four instances, very extraordinary ones, too much so. The storm, however, never lasted for half an hour, and anger never rested in the bosom.

"16. My tongue has undergone very little change, I believe. "17. Under my first Latin master, who was a churl, I spent my time in shooting, skating, swimming, flying kites, and every other boyish exercise and diversion I could invent. Never mischievous. Under my second master, who was kind, I began to like my books and neglect my sports.

"18. From that time I have been too studious. At college, next to the ordinary routine of classical studies, mathematics and natural philosophy were my favorite pursuits. When I began to study law, I found ethics, the law of nations, the civil law, the common law, a field too vast to admit of many other inquiries. Classics, history, and philosophy have, however, never been wholly neglected to this day..

"20. I have no miniature, and have been too much abused by painters, ever to sit to any one again."

The following is one of his most interesting letters to Dr. Rush, his old and tried friend, dated on Christmas day, 1811. Although Mr. Adams here seems to think that Mr. Jefferson and himself could have little to say to each other at that stage of life, he was never more mistaken. When the ice was once broken between them, they bore down with regular letter broadsides, discussing even their political differences, and making a wonderful overhauling of old philosophies, heathen religions, and many other things. A shower of letters went flying for a time between Quincy and Monticello, as if these old Presidents thought the

world depended greatly on a settlement of things to their satisfaction. He wrote:

"I never was so much at a loss how to answer a letter as yours of the 16th.

Shall I assume a sober face, and write a grave essay on religion, philosophy, laws, or government?

"Shall I laugh, like Bacchus among his grapes, wine-vats, and bottles?

"Shall I assume the man of the world, the fine gentleman, the courtier, and bow and scrape, with a smooth, smiling face, soft words, many compliments and apologies; think myself highly honored, bound in gratitude, etc., etc.?

"I perceive plainly enough, Rush, that you have been teasing Jefferson to write to me, as you did me some time ago to write to him. You gravely advise me to receive the olive-branch,' as if there had been war; but there has never been any hostility on my part, nor that I know, on his. When there has been no war, there can be no room for negotiations of peace.

"Mr. Jefferson speaks of my political opinions; but I know of no difference between him and myself relative to the Constitution, or to forms of government in general. In measures of administration, we have differed in opinion. I have never approved the repeal of the judicial law, the repeal of the taxes, the neglect of the navy; and I have always believed that his system of gunboats for a national defense was defective. To make it complete, he ought to have taken a hint from Molière's Learned Ladies,' and appointed three or four brigades of horse, with a majorgeneral, and three or four brigadiers, to serve on board his galleys of Malta. I have never approved his non-embargo, non-intercourse, or non-importation laws. But I have raised no clamors nor made any opposition to any of these measures. The Nation approved them; and what is my judgment against that of the Nation? On the contrary, he disapproved of the Alien Law and Sedition Law,' which I believe to have been constitutional and salutary, if not necessary.

"He disapproved of the eight per cent loan, and with good reason. I hated it as much as any man, and the army, too, which occasioned it. He disapproved, perhaps, of the partial war with France, which I believed, as far as it proceeded, to be a holy war. He disapproved of taxes, and perhaps, the whole scheme

of my Administration, etc., and so, perhaps, did the Nation. But his Administration and mine are passed into the dark backwards, and are now of no more importance than the Administration of the Old Congress in 1774, and 1775.

He

"We differed in opinion about the French Revolution. thought it wise and good, and that it would end in the establishment of a free republic. I saw through it, to the end of it, before it broke out, and was sure it could end only in a restoration of the Bourbons, or a military despotism, after deluging France and Europe in blood. In this opinion I differed from you as much as from Jefferson; but all this made me no more of an enemy to you than to him, nor him than to you. I believe you both to mean well to mankind and your country. I might suspect you both to sacrifice a little to the infernal gods, and perhaps, unconsciously to suffer your judgments to be a little swayed by a love of popularity, and possibly by a little spice of ambition.

"In point of republicanism, all the difference I ever knew or could discover between you and me, or between Jefferson and me, consisted,

"1. In the difference between speeches and messages. I was a monarchist because I thought a speech more manly, more respectful to Congress and the Nation. Jefferson and Rush preferred messages.

"2. I held levees once a week, that all my time might not be wasted by idle visits. Jefferson's whole eight years was a levee. "3. I dined a large company once or twice a week. Jefferson dined a dozen every day.

"4. Jefferson and Rush were for liberty and straight hair. thought curled hair as republican as straight.

"In these, and a few other points of equal importance, all miserable frivolities, that Jefferson and Rush ought to blush that they ever laid any stress upon them, I might differ; but I never knew any points of more consequence, on which there was any variation between us.

"You exhort me to forgiveness and love of enemies,' as if I considered, or had ever considered, Jefferson as my enemy. This is not so; I have always loved him as a friend. If I ever received or suspected any injury from him, I have forgiven it long and long ago, and have no more resentment against him than against you.

"You enforce your exhortations by the most solemn consider

ations that can enter the human mind. After mature reflection upon them, and laying them properly to heart, I could not help feeling that they were so unnecessary, that you must excuse me if I had some inclination to be ludicrous.

"But why do you make so much ado about nothing? Of what use can it be for Jefferson and me to exchange letters? I have nothing to say to him, but to wish him an easy journey to Heaven, when he goes, which I wish may be delayed, as long as life shall be agreeable to him. And he can have nothing to say to me, but to bid me make haste and be ready. Time and chance, however, or possibly design, may produce erelong a letter between us."

In 1812 the occasion came, and the correspondence between the two old Presidents began. In one of the numerous letters to Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams made the following brief defense of the measures of his Administration which had been so foolishly and wickedly assailed:

"June 14, 1813.

"In your letter to Dr. Priestley, of March 21, 1801, you 'tender to him the protection of those laws which were made for the wise and good like him, and disclaim the legitimacy of that libel on legislation, which, under the form of a law, was, for some time, placed among them.' This law, I presume, was the 'Alien Law,' as it was called.

"As your name is subscribed to that law, as Vice-President, and mine as President, I know not why you are not as responsible for it as I am. Neither of us was concerned in the formation of it. We were then at war with France. French spies then swarmed in our cities and our country; some of them were intolerably impudent, turbulent, and seditious. To check these, was the design of this law. Was there ever a government which had not authority to defend itself against spies in its own bosom, spies of an enemy at war? This law was never executed by me in any

instance."

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE LAST FOURTH OF JULY-EARTH TO EARTH AND DUST TO DUST.

A

T the second election of Mr. Monroe, Mr. Adams

was chosen as one of the Massachusetts electors by the Democrats, and cast his vote for Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins. He also acted as president of the College of Electors in his State at that time. He now continued to stand mainly with the Democratic party. But his interest was not in politics. On the 16th of August, 1813, he wrote to Thomas Jefferson:

"Your friend, my only daughter, expired yesterday morning in the arms of her husband, her son, her daughter, her father and mother, her husband's two sisters, and two of her nieces, in the forty-ninth year of her age, forty of which she was the healthiest and firmest of them all, since which she has been a monument to suffering, and to patience."

And on the 28th of October, 1818, Mrs. Adams died. This was the saddest event connected with his life. She had been truer, wiser, and better than all the world to him; and although he resumed his accustomed walks and ways, after a time, he never lost sight of her absence, and with her went his usual brightness and cheerfulness. Yet he did not cease to work.

After this time he wrote a series of letters bearing upon the Revolution, and especially designed to establish the place and importance of the deeds of James