political heir-looms of powerful old families, which may not be wholly lost sight of at this late day.

It can hardly be useful or interesting to review more fully this now correctly understood, but greatly censured, period in Mr. Adams's career. At no other time in the history of political parties in this country, perhaps, could a politician whose acts were, at all, a matter of public note or comment, have furnished so many reasons which must now appear good and sufficient for a change of political faith and practice as at the very moment when John Quincy Adams crossed over into the Democratic (Republican) camp.

Not that the new party, which hardly had an existence before the Presidency of the elder Adams, was an entirely respectable, reliable, or correct organization, but the Federalists, who had established the Government, had wandered from the right in some very important matters of administration, to say nothing of some principles of foreign policy, cowardly, if not also dishonorable. Neither Thomas Jefferson nor his successor was the man for a great warlike emergency in the life of the Republic, but the important events transpiring under them were gathering to their support the great mass of the patriotic men of the country.

Notwithstanding this fact, in some respects it was a strange thing to see an Adams cutting asunder from his old party and aristocratic social moorings. That Mr. Adams had been bought there was not then nor at any subsequent time the least foundation in truth. Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, did ask him about the probability of his accepting an office under Mr. Jefferson, but nothing appears in this more than that Mr. Adams would

not depart from his principles to have any position in the gift of the President, nor would he decline an office simply because Mr. Jefferson might proffer it. The notorious William B. Giles, of Virginia, touched Mr. Adams on the subject of an appointment under Mr. Jefferson, but it was found that the course Mr. Adams was pursuing had its origin in his own independent views of the demands of the times. He had no political expectations. He asked nothing of the Democratic party, nor did it promise him any thing.

When he heard prominent Federalists attempting to justify the most malignant and unprovoked outrages of the British Minister he lost his temper, and forever abandoned any kind of co-operation with their party. In the history of the times his course stands above reproach. In the double record of his public words and acts and the private confessions of a Diary in which he can hardly be accused of meditated insincerity, his motives mainly appear above suspicion.

Nor are the Massachusetts Federalists to be censured without stint. That they were in some particulars mistaken, it is easy to believe, but that their motives were evil is quite another thing. They, no doubt, earnestly felt that Mr. Adams had broken faith and dealt unfairly with them, and as mere party adherents they were right. They did believe, too, that Mr. Jefferson's non-importation and embargo measures were the most wicked things which could have been done to them. They were a race of traders, and they thought the blundering Southerner was going to ruin them and the country. It was the old story of the blinding influence of money - getting, of commercial and selfish interests. When patriotism rises above these it

becomes a virtue worthy of all admiration. The modest facts would, perhaps, support the assertion that Mr. Adams reached this standard at this very period in his career which has been so unfavorably criticised.

In the summer of 1805 Mr. Adams was offered the new professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard University, which he accepted on two or three conditions; one of which was that he should select his own time for delivering his lectures while serving in Congress. He was not, however, inaugurated in this new position until June of the following year.

Although an orator himself, Mr. Adams never put much stress upon his powers in that way. On writing of his efforts in the Senate on an important occasion when he desired to appear to the best advantage, he said: "In manner I was as I always am, miserably defective, but the substance was not without weight."

In the winter of 1807, in comparing himself with Mr. Bayard, he wrote in his Diary :

"For the talent of extemporaneous speaking he knows his great superiority over me, and he exults in displaying it, because in every other particular he is conscious of his inferiority. It is, perhaps, from consciousness of both these things, also, that his exultations of victory are so galling to me. I know my moral and political principles to be more pure than his; and this is saying little, for his are very loose. I believe my talents and acquirements greater than his, excepting that of unpremeditated eloquence. Of that I have very little, and he more than any man I ever heard in Congress."

Still all of this did not prevent his being a very successful teacher of oratory, as the times then went, in Harvard University. His father and mother were present to hear him deliver his installation address,

and by both them and himself this was deemed an event of some genuine importance in his career. On the 11th of July, 1806, he began his first course of lectures, and continued to hold the position until appointed Minister to Russia in the summer of 1809. In 1810 these lectures were published in two volumes, and may justly be classed among the most valuable contributions to the literature of that day. Although many recent, advanced works contain all the ideas of importance, connected with the theme, which are to be found in Mr. Adams's lectures, still no other old American work in this field rose to such dignity and respectability. Were it a search after scientific information, or patterns to adorn the finished oratory of today, these lectures might well be shunned, but these old works have in them other sources of interest. While they abound with the display of Latin and Greek learning, and research in a dead, if not also worthless past, which may have been, to some extent, excusable, in even wise men at that period, they also abound in beautiful sentiments and lofty precepts on many a topic in which the wise never lose interest. In this respect they are not works of the past, as may be seen in a few extracts placed among the sayings of Mr. Adams in the closing chapter of this volume.

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CHAPTER VI.

RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES-JOHN QUINCY ADAMS ABROAD-DIPLOMATIC DISSIPATIONS.

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T the end of 1808 Mr. Adams made this record in his Diary

"The year which has now closed has been among the most eventful of my life. It has removed me altogether from public life, and placed me in public consideration far behind the station to which I had attained. I have the approbation only of my own conscience, and the conviction upon my own mind of having done my duty at every hazard. My private concerns have suffered in proportion to those of the public, and are already under no small embarrassment."

A man with political promises and expectations. would hardly have written in such a tone, and yet to Mr. Adams's unfriendly critics, the event which now follows was positive proof of all the charges they had made against him. Late in the winter he went to Washington to conduct some business before the Supreme Court, and was present at Mr. Madison's inauguration. On the 6th of March, 1809, he visited the White House by invitation, and was notified by the new President of his desire to nominate him as Minister to Russia, a country with which diplomatic relations had not yet been established by this Government. After some consideration as to the character and probable duration of the mission, Mr. . Adams determined to accept it, and his name was at