It is well to remember that this was a fruitful period for the Diary. Whatever fashion required of him, and however compressed was the fleeting day at St. Petersburg, Mr. Adams found time to make some record of all the more important events which came to his attention, and many of the utterly worthless ones.

Much of his time he was able, too, to spend in a way mainly more useful to himself, at least such may be a charitable view of the case. He pursued with his usual industry the study of the language and history of Russia, and after the customs and manners of the people, made the commerce of the Empire a special study. He also gave considerable attention to the examination of the system of coins, weights, and measures in use in Russia, France, and England; and although this last pursuit did serve him perhaps in the dry, but elaborate, report he made to Congress, years afterwards, on weights and measures, he considered its usefulness, at the time, as exceedingly problematical. He also took up much of his time with the senseless and immoral writings of the old so-called scholars of Greece and Rome.

Amidst all this terrestrial work he was not lost, however. His eyes were daily turned towards the heavens. Religion Religion and astronomy came in for no little share of his thoughts. He read many of the most learned of the foreign astronomical writers, and went largely into computations connected with the ancient, Mohammedan, and Christian modes of reckoning time. During this residence in Russia, too, he wrote the remarkable letters to his sons on the character and use of the Bible, to which full reference will be made in another part of this volume. Thus was this

busy man engaged in the midst of the gayeties and follies of a foreign court, in which fashion and a sense of duty to his country compelled him to take part.

How unlike the suicidal and shallow time-killer was he able to write of himself! He said :—

"I feel nothing like the tediousness of time. I suffer nothing like ennui. Time is too short for me, rather than too long. If the day was forty-eight hours, instead of twenty-four, I could employ them all, if I had but eyes and hands to read and write."

Mr. Adams's official services in Russia were not very important. He had not full authority to negotiate a commercial treaty with that country, but he exerted himself to prepare the way for the future, and labored incessantly to enlist the Russian Government in his views against the continental system of commerce, and especially against the intolerant preponderance of England. The Russian Chancellor, Count Romanzoff, one of the most able, wise, and conscientious. politicians of his time, highly respected Mr. Adams, and not only listened earnestly to his views, but also submitted his own, in one or two important instances, to Mr. Adams for his suggestions or criticism. This good opinion of Mr. Adams, on the part of Alexander and his prime minister, no doubt, to some extent, sharpened their friendly disposition towards his country, and led the Emperor to offer his services, in 1812, as a pacificator between America and England. Mr. Adams favored this step, and President Madison accepted Russia's offer of mediation, and was wise enough to risk sending commissioners to join Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg, to begin negotiations under the direction of the Emperor, on the very doubtful supposition of England's acceptance. England rejected

the proffer, and by doing so, very evidently started afresh Russia's ill-will for herself, and good inclinations towards the United States. But England now offered to negotiate with this country on her own responsibility, proposing to send commissioners to London, or to Göttingen. This proposition, Mr. Madison also accepted, and at the head of the American commissioners Mr. Adams was placed, who, leaving his family in St. Petersburg, set out on the 28th of April, 1814, to enter upon this important service. But this was destined to be the end of his residence in Russia.

During the session of Congress, in the winter of 1810, a vacancy occurring on the Supreme Bench the President appointed Mr. Adams to fill it, and the Senate confirmed the appointment. Although Mr. Adams fortunately declined this office, it is implied in his letter doing so that had it not been for the illness of his wife making it impossible for him to return to America soon, he would have accepted. Yet his appointment was a mistake on the part of Mr. Madison, and his acceptance would have been a greater mistake on his part. The qualities of his mind, and his active disposition, rendered Mr. Adams unfit for such a position. It would have saved no little turmoil in after times, if Mr. Adams had been lost in a justice's gown, but how brief and tame would have been the history of Judge John Quincy Adams! The very thought of it is ridiculous in view of the active and stubborn career of the "old man eloquent."

CHAPTER VII.

GHENT WONDERFUL CONDUCT OF THE AMERICAN COMMISSIONERS-SWEET PEACE-THE TREATY,

WHILE

WHILE on his way to Göttenburg, Mr. Adams was informed that the place of meeting had been changed to Ghent, in Belgium, at which place he arrived on the 24th of June, and a few days subsequently met his colleagues, Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, and James A. Bayard, Jonathan Russell not arriving for some weeks later.

The British commissioners, Lord Gambier, Henry Goulburn, and William Adams, with a single secretary, Anthony St. John Baker, did not arrive until early in August. Goulburn was a member of Parliament, and Adams was a lawyer, whom Mr. Adams chose to designate as "Doctor," because he had discovered that the degree of doctor of civil laws had been conferred upon him.

In the large and not very reliable supply of clerks attached to the American commission was Payne Todd, the son of Mrs. Madison, who, notwithstanding his taste for gambling and whisky, was not, perhaps, the worst one of the lot.

Soon after the arrival of the British commissioners in Ghent, they sent Mr. Baker to give notice of the fact, and propose to the Americans to meet them at their quarters in the hotel. The British commis

sioners, who were not supposed to be equal to the American, man for man, exhibited their knowledge of diplomatic trickery and their weakness at once in this innocent-looking proposition, which was rejected. The Americans were well aware of the diplomatic usage attaching inferiority to commissioners who gave preference in their meetings to the quarters of the representatives of the other treating nation. The step was taken deliberately by the British, no doubt, with the hope of establishing for the moment the sentiment of superiority they entertained over the power with which they were about to negotiate. Thus, on the very threshold of negotiations, suspicion and ill-feelings were started between the two commissions.

In their discussion of the main question brought up the American commissioners showed the discordant materials on which their country had to depend in this critical negotiation. After succeeding in establishing the fact among themselves that, should they consent to meet at the quarters of the British commissioners, they would disgrace their own country at the outset, Mr. Adams wrote a note, slightly modified by the cool and temperate Gallatin, proposing to meet at any place which might be agreed upon mutually, at the same time authorizing Mr. Hughes, the commissioned secretary of the legation, to propose the Hotel des PaysBas as the place of inaugurating the negotiations. To this the Britons assented, and the seven commissioners, Mr. Russell not yet having appeared, met a little after noon on the 8th of August, 1814, at the Hotel des Pays-Bas. Lord Gambier and John Quincy Adams made complimentary remarks, which must have appeared more than ordinarily insincere under the