The handwriting of Washington, large, liberal, and flowing, might be accepted as proof of the honesty of the figures. Indeed this same handwriting is a capital index of the style of all the letters, and may help us to what we would say of its characteristics. It is open, manly, and uniform, with nothing minced, affected, or contracted. It has neither the precise nor the slovenly style which scholars variously fall into; but a certain grandeur of the countenance of the man seems to look through it. Second to its main quality of truthfulness, saying no more than the writer was ready to abide by, is its amenity and considerate courtesy. Washington had, at different times, many unpleasant truths to tell; but he could always convey them in the language of a gentleman. He wrote like a man of large and clear views. His position, which was on an eminence, obliterated minor niceties and shades which might have given a charm to his writings in other walks of life. This should always be remembered, that Washington lived in the eye of the public, and thought, spoke, and wrote under the responsibility of the empire. Let his writings be compared with those of other rulers and commanders, he will be found to hold his rank nobly, as well intellectually as politically. There will be found, too, a variety in his treatment of different topics and occasions. He can compliment a friend in playful happy terms on his marriage, as well as thunder his demands for a proper attention to the interests of the country at the doors of Congress. Never vulgar, he frequently uses colloquial phrases with effect, and, unsuspected of being a poet, is fond of figurative expressions. In fine, a critical examination of the writings of Washington will show that the man here, as in other lights, will suffer nothing by a minute inspection.

JOHN DICKINSON,

THE author of The Farmer's Letters, the spirited and accurate vindication of the rights of the Colonies against the pretensions of the British Parliament, and the writer of several of the most important appeals of the Old Continental Congress, was a native of Maryland, where he was born in 1732. His parents shortly removed to Delaware. He studied law at Philadelphia and prosecuted his studies at the temple in London. On his return to Philadelphia he practised at the bar. In 1764 he was one of the members for the county in the House of Assembly of the Province, when he defended in a speech the privileges of the state against the meditated innovations of the Government. It is characterized by the force of argument, weight and moderation of expression by which his style was always afterwards recognised. His Address to the Committee of Correspondence in Barbadoes who had censured the opposition of the northern colonies to the Stamp Act, published at Philadelphia, in 1766, is an eloquent and dignified defence of the proceedings of

It was published at Washington, "by the Trustees of Washington's Manual Labour School and Male Orphan Asylum, for the benefit of that institution."

+ It is endorsed, by the same hand, "Accounts, G. Washington with the United States, commencing June, 1775, and ending June, 1783. Comprehending a space of eight years."

since grown familiar in Congressional speaking. "Let any person," says he, "consider the speeches lately made in parliament, and the resolutions

To A Dich incor

said to be made there, notwithstanding the convulsions occasioned through the British Empire, by the opposition of their colonies to the stamp act, and he may easily judge what would have been their situation, in case they had bent down and humbly taken up the burden prepared for them. When the Exclusion bill was depending in the House of Commons, Col. Titus made this short speech-' Mr. Speaker, I hear a lion roaring in the lobby. Shall we secure the door, and keep him there or shall we let him in, to try if we can turn him out again?'"*

The Farmer's Letters to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies were printed at Philadelphia in 1767. Dr. Franklin caused them to be reprinted in London the next year, with a Preface, which he wrote, inviting the attention of Great Britain to the dispassionate consideration of American "prejudices and errors," if these were such, and hoping the publication of the Letters would "draw forth a satisfactory answer, if they can be answered." In 1769, the book was published at Paris in French. It consists of twelve letters,

Pictorial Hist. of England. Bk. viii. ch. 1, p. 733. Notes and Queries, vii. 318. The last application of this convenient parliamentary proverb, was in the Nebraska question in the debate of 1854. The versification of the story by the Rev. Mr. Bramston, in his adaptation of Horace's Art of Poetry, supplies the usual form of quotation.

With art and modesty your part maintain;
And talk like Col'nel Titus, not like Lane.
The trading knight with rants his speech begins,
Sun, moon, and stars, and dragons, saints, and kings:

But Titus said, with his uncommon sense,

When the Exclusion bill was in suspense,

I hear a lion in the lobby roar;

Say, Mr. Speaker, shall we shut the door
And keep him there, or shall we let him in
To try if we can turn him out again?

Dodsley's Collection of Poems, i. 265.

66

written in the character of "a farmer, settled, after a variety of fortunes, near the banks of the river Delaware, in the province of Pennsylvania," who claims for himself a liberal education and experience of "the busy scenes of life," but who has become convinced "that a man may be as happy without bustle as with it." He spends his time mostly in his library, and has the friendship of two or three gentlemen of abilities and learning," and having been taught by his honored parents to love humanity and liberty," proposes to try the political abuses of the times by these sacred tests. There is very little of the farmer about the work, unless the cool tempered style and honest patriotic purpose is a characteristic of the fields. The skill and force of the argument betray the trained constitutional lawyer. The immediate topics handled are the act for suspending the legislation of New York, the act for granting the duties on paper, &c., the propriety of peaceful but effective resistance to the oppression of Parliament, the established prerogative of the colonies invaded by Grenville, the grievance of an additional tax for the support of the conquests in America from the French, the necessity in free states of "perpetual jealousy respecting liberty" and guardianship of the constitutional rights of the British subject and colonist. There is little ornament or decoration in these writings; the style is simple, and, above all, sincere. You feel, as you read, that you are paying attention to the language of an honest gentleman. England should have taken Franklin's warning of the circulation of these letters, and should not have neglected the force of their mingled courtesy and opposition. With the firmest they breathe the fondest mind. The attachment to England is constantly expressed, and was the feeling of the high-minded race of American gentlemen who became the Whigs of the Revolution. "We have," he writes, 66 a generous, sensible, and humane nation, to whom we may apply. Let us behave like dutiful children, who have received unmerited blows from a beloved parent. Let us complain to our parent; but let our complaints speak at the same time the language of affliction and veneration."

Thus early in the field in defence of American constitutional liberty was John Dickinson. In 1774, he published his Essay on the Constitutional Power of Great Britain over the Colonies in America, prepared as a portion of the Instructions of the Committee for the Province of Pennsylvania to their Representatives in Assembly. Elected to the Congress of 1774, he wrote the Address to the Inhabitants of Quebec, the First Petition to the King, the Declaration to the Armies, the Second Petition to the King, and the Address to the Several States. These are papers of strong and innate eloquence. The Declaration of Congress of July 6, 1775, read to the soldiery, contains the memorable sentences, cause is just. Our Union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favor towards us, that his providence

"Our

The poet Crabbe's noble peasant, Isaac Ashford, who, With the firmest had the fondest mind.

would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operations, and possessed the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified by these animating reflections, we most solemnly. before God and the world, declare, that exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties: being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves." Its concluding appeal was:-"In our own native land, and in defence of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it-for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before. With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war." When these sentences were read in camp to General Putnam's division, the soldiers "shouted in three huzzas, a loud Amen!"* They express Dickinson's feeling on the commencement of hostilities, and the principles which governed him when of all the members of the Congress of 1776 he only did not sign the Declaration of Independence. He was ready for war as a means of redress, but he would not, at that time, shut the door against reconciliation. His course was appreciated by his noble compatriots in Congress, who knew the man and his services; with the people it cost him two years of retirement from the public service. Though claiming the privilege of thinking for himself, he was not one of those impracticable statesmen who refuse to act with a constitutional majority. He proved his devotion to the cause of liberty by immediately taking arms in an advance to Elizabethtown. Retiring to Delaware, he was employed in 1777 in the military defence of that State, whose Assembly returned him to Congress in 1799, when he wrote the Address to the States of the 26th May. He succeeded Cæsar Rodney as President of Delaware in 1781. The next year he filled the same office in Pennsylvania, which he held till Franklin succeeded him in 1785. His Letters of Fabius on the Federal Constitution, in 1788. were an appeal to the people in support of the provisions of that proposed instrument, marked by his habitual energy and precision. In the reprint of this work he compares passages of it with the views and expressions of Paine's Rights of Man, as published three years after his original. Another series of letters, with the same signature, in 1797, On the Present Situation of

Humphrey's Life of Putnam.

Public Affairs, present a review of the relations of the country with France, in which there is a spirit of calm historical investigation, with much statesmanlike philosophical discussion, as in his remarks on the connexion of self-love and virtue, applied to the imputed interested motives of the French government in its American alliances. At this time he was living at Wilmington, in Delaware, where he superintended the collection of his political writings in 1801.* He passed his remaining years in retirement, in the enjoyment of his literary acquisitions, and the society of his friends, who were attracted by his conversation and manners, dying Feb. 14, 1808, at the age of seventy-six.

He had married in 1770 Mary Norris, of Fair Hill, Philadelphia county. John Adams, in 1774, dined with him at this seat, and notices "the beautiful prospect of the city, the river, and the country, fine gardens, and a very grand library. The most of his books were collected by Mr. Norris, once speaker of the House here, father of Mrs. Dickinson. Mr. Dickinson (he adds) is a very modest man, and very ingenious as well as agreeable." Again he describes him in committee duty of Congress " very modest, delicate, and timid," though he forfeited the character with Adams by what the latter thought an attempt to bully him out of his ardent pursuit of independence. Personally, Adams describes him at that time as subject to hectic complaints. "He is a shadow; tall, but slender as a reed; pale as ashes; one would think at first sight that he could not live a month; yet, upon a more attentive inspection, he looks as if the springs of life were strong enough to last many years."†

PELEG FOLGER.

PELEG FOLGER, a Quaker, was born at Nantucket in the year 1734. His boyhood was passed on a farm, where he remained until twenty-one, when he changed from land to sea, and for several years was engaged in the cod and whale fisheries. He kept a journal of his voyages, which is written in a inuch more scholarly manner than could be expected from his limited education. He introduced into it a number of poetical compositions, one of which is quoted in Macy's History of Nantucket.

DOMINUM COLLAUDAMUS.

Praise ye the Lord, O celebrate his fame, Praise the eternal God, that dwells above; His power will forever be the same,

The same for ever his eternal love.

Long as that glitt'ring lamp of heaven, the sun,
Long as the moon or twinkling stars appear,
Long as they all their annual courses run,
And make the circle of the sliding year;

So long our gracious God will have the care
To save his tender children from all harms;
Wherever danger is, he will be near,

And, underneath, his everlasting arms.

*The Political Writings of John Dickinson, Esq., late President of the State of Delaware, and of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 2 vols. 8vo. Wilmington: Bonsal and Niles, 1801.

+ Adams's Diary. Works, il. 860, 879, 401.

O Lord, I pray, my feeble muse inspire,
That, while I touch upon a tender string,
I may be filled, as with celestial fire,
And of thy great deliverances sing.
My soul is lost, as in a wond'rous maze,

When I contemplate thine omnipotence, That did the hills create, and mountains raise, And spread the stars over the wide expanse. Almighty God, thou didst create the light,

That swiftly through th' etherial regions flies; The sun to rule the day, the moon the night, With stars adorning all the spangled skies. Thou mad'st the world and all that is therein, Men, beasts, and birds, and fishes of the sea: Men still against thy holy law do sin,

Whilst all the rest thy holy voice obey. Monsters that in the briny ocean dwell,

And winged troops that every way disperse, They all thy wonders speak, thy praises tell, O thou great ruler of the universe.

Ye sailors, speak, that plough the wat'ry main, Where raging seas and foaming billows roar, Praise ye the Lord, and in a lofty strain,

Sing of his wonder-working love and power. Thou did'st, O Lord, create the mighty whale, That wondrous monster of a mighty length; Vast is his head and body, vast his tail, Beyond conception his unmeasured strength. When he the surface of the sea hath broke, Arising from the dark abyss below, His breath appears a lofty stream of smoke, The circling waves like glitt'ring banks of snow. But, everlasting God, thou dost ordain,

That we poor feeble mortals should engage (Ourselves, our wives and children to maintain,) This dreadful monster with a martial rage. And, though he furiously doth us assail, Thou dost preserve us from all dangers free; He cuts our boat in pieces with his tail, And spills us all at once into the sea.

*

I twice into the dark abyss was cast,
Straining and struggling to retain my breath,
Thy waves and billows over me were past,
Thou didst, O Lord, deliver me from death.

Expecting every moment still to die,

Methought I never more should see the light: Well nigh the gates of vast eternity

Environed me with everlasting night. Great was my anguish, earnest were my cries, Above the power of human tongue to tell, Thou hear'dst, O Lord, my groans and bitter sighs, Whilst I was lab'ring in the womb of hell. Thou saved'st me from the dangers of the sea,

That I might bless thy name for ever more.
Thy love and power the same will ever be,
Thy mercy is an inexhausted store.

Oh, may I in thy boundless power confide,
And in thy glorious love for ever trust,
Whilst I in thy inferior world reside,

Till earth return to earth and dust to dust.
And when I am unbound from earthly clay,
Oh, may my soul then take her joyful flight
Into the realms of everlasting day,

To dwell in endless pleasure and delight, At God's right hand, in undiminished joy, In the blest tabernacles made above, Glory and peace without the least alloy, Uninterrupted, never dying love.

There angels and archangels still remain,
The saints in their superior regions dwell,
They praise their God, and in a heavenly strain,
The wond'rous works of great Jehovah tell.
And when I shall this earthly ball forsake,
And leave behind me frail mortality,
Then may my soul her nimble journey take
Into the regions of eternity.

Then may my blessed soul ascend above,

To dwell with that angelic, heavenly choir, And in eternal songs of praise and love,

Bless thee, my God, my King, for evermore.

Folger was a man of pure and exemplary life, and on his retirement from the sea, much sought after for counsel by his neighbors. He died in 1789.

JOHN ADAMS.

THE Adams family had been thoroughly Americanized by a residence of three generations in Massachusetts, when one of the most ardent heralds and active patriots of the Revolution, John Adams, was born at Braintree, the original settlement of his great-great-grandfather, the 19th October, 1735. His father, who was a plain farmer and mechanic, was encouraged by his aptness for books to give him a liberal education. He was instructed by Mr. Marsh, for Cambridge, at which institution he took his degree in the year 1755. At this period, his Diary, published by his grandson, Charles Francis Adams, commences. It is a curious picture of an active and politic struggle with the world, full of manly and ingenuous traits. He kept this diary for thirty years. At its commencement* he is at Worcester, at the age of twenty, fresh from his college education, thinking of preaching, and, in the mean time, teaching school after the good American fashion, as a means of livelihood. He records his visits to the best houses of the place, while he studies character closely, and picks up knowledge where it is always most forcibly taught-in the oral, conversational lessons of men of weight and experience. He questioned points of the Calvinistic creed, discussed freely the Puritan theology :-in later life referred his Unitarian views to this period, and the result was an abandonment of his proposed ministerial study for the law. His independent chopping of logic with the country gentlemen and clergy was good discipline for a revolutionist, who was to cope in the court room and the senate with British political authority.t

It might be taken as an omen of the future nndaunted revolutionist, that the first entry in this Diary, of the date of Nov. 18, 1755, relates to an earthquake in America: "We had a very severe shock of an earthquake. It continued near four minutes. I then was at my father's in Braintree, and awoke out of my sleep in the midst of it. The house seemed to rock, and reel, and crack, as if it would fall in ruins about us. Chimnies were shattered by it, within one mile of my father's house." This was a vibration of the great shock which destroyed the city of Lisbon. Other "shocks" of the political and social world were to be entered upon Mr. Adams's Diary and Correspondence.

This is a marked trait of the Diary, and is commented upon by a writer in the North American Review (Oct. 1850), as an important feature in the intellectual character of the times. Burke, in his admirable sketch of the love of freedom in the American Colonies, alludes to their religious character, and especially to the prevalence in the northern colonies of dissent from the Established Church of the mother country. The religious discussion and controversy between different parties among the dissidents from the Church, had escaped his

His legal development as a student in the office of Samuel Putnam follows: stiff, formal, constrained reading in the days before Blackstone, with many soul and body conflicts, between flesh and spirit, all set down in the Diary:-memorials of idleness, pipe-smoking, gallanting ladies, reading Ovid's Art of Love to Dr. Savil's wife, and forining resolutions against all of them, in favor of Wood and Justinian, Locke and Bolingbroke. His self-knowledge appears to have been accurate and unflinching. It is sometimes displayed with considerable naireté. We may smile at his modelling a professional manner upon that of his preceptor, where he says, "I learned with design to imitate Putnam's sneer, his sly look, and his look of contempt. This look may serve good ends in life, may procure respect;" and at his deliberate studies to ingratiate himself with the deacons by small conversational hypocrisies, and his intentions as a thing "of no small importance, to set the tongues of old and young men and women a prating in one's favor." His analysis of his vanity is frequent; a vanity which was the constant spur to action, allied to constitutional boldness and courage, balanced by ready suspicion of his motives and bearing. In his youth Adams was at once self-reliant and self-denying: a combination which guaranteed him success in the world. This training and formation of the man, as his own pen set it down from day to day, is a cheerful, healthy picture of conscientious exertion.

In 1765, he printed in the Boston Gazette the papers which form his Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law-a spirited protest against the ecclesiastical and political systems of Europe, with a general incitement to cultivate earnestly civil and religious liberty, and the principles of American freedom independently of England.

It is not necessary here to pursue his political career, which began in 1770 with his election to the legislature, after he had secured a position at the bar. In 1774, he travelled to Philadelphia a member of the first Continental Congress, and has left us some spirited notices of its eminent characters. He found time to write in the same year his Novanglus; a History of the Dispute with America, from its Origin in 1754 to the Present Time. This was a series of papers in the Boston Gazette, written in reply to the articles "Massachusettensis," the productions of Daniel Leonard, which were much thought of on the Royalist side, and were reprinted by Rivington. Adams's language is direct and energetic, and meets Tory assumptions with at least equal vehemence.*

of

penetration. It had no doubt contributed materially to sharpen the public mind and strengthen the existing predisposition of the people to canvass with acuteness, alike for the purposes of defence and opposition, important propositions on which they were called upon to make up their minds. Neither of the parties, arrayed against each other mainly under the influence of the preaching of Whitefield, allied itself with the government in the political struggle; and the entire force of the excitement of intellect and controversial skill, produced by these controversies, was, between the years 1761 and 1775, turned upon the discussion of the right of Parliament to tax America.

These were republished at Boston in 1819, under the direc tion of Adams, as a reply to the claims of Wirt for the early Virginia movement, in his Life of Patrick Henry, with the title, "Novanglus and Massachusettensis, or Political Essays, published in the years 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of Controversy between Great Britain and her Colonies. The

In the Congress of the next year, he had the honor of first nominating George Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the American forces. Jefferson, with whom he was on the committee for preparing the Declaration of Independence, has celebrated his doughty championship of that instrument. The letter which he wrote to his wife when the act was resolved upon, has become familiar to American ears as "household words." Its anticipations have been fulfilled in every syllable. The second day of July, 1776," he writes, "will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, for evermore."*

In 1777, Adams succeeded Silas Deane as Commissioner to France, where he was again sent in 1779, as minister, to negotiate peace. His pen was employed in Holland in exhibiting the ideas and resources of the United States. He arranged the treaty of peace of 1783, at Paris, with Franklin, Jay, and Laurens. In 1785, he became the first minister to the court of England. In 1787, in London, he published the first volume of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, and the second and third the year following. This work was primarily suggested by a letter of Turgot, appended to the "Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution," by Dr. Richard Price, in

former by John Adams, late President of the United States; the latter by Jonathan Sewall, then King's Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. To which are added a number of Letters, lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor." Adams then thought his opponent to have been Mr. Sewall.-Works of Adams, iv. 4; Kennedy's Life of Wirt, ii. 43.

The letter in which this famous sentence of Adams occurs was written to Mrs. Adams, and was dated Philadelphia, July 8, 1776. It refers to the second of July, the day of the resolution in Congress to make the declaration. The convenience of referring the sentence to the fourth is obvious.

which comments are made on the Constitutions of the States, the imitation of English usages objected to, and the preference given to a single authority of the nation or assembly, over a balanced system of powers. The reading which Adams brings to bear in the discussion of this subject is very great, as he describes the conduct of ancient and modern republics, and scrutinizes the opinions of historians and political philosophers. The Italian republics, in particular, occupy a large share of his attention. The work was prepared in great haste, and with some defects of form, which the editor of the Collected Works has endeavored to amend by changing the original style of letters to a friend into chapters, embracing the whole or a distinct portion of a particular topic, and by the arrangement of some dislocated passages.

On his return to the United States, in 1788, he was elected the first Vice-President of the United States, an office which he held during both terms of Washington's Presidency, to which he succeeded in 1797. His Discourses on Davila; a series of papers on political history, were published in 1790, in the Gazette of the United States, at Philadelphia, as a sequel to the Defence. In 1812, he wrote of this work: "This dull, heavy volume still excites the wonder of its author,-first, that he could find, amidst the constant scenes of business and dissipation in which he was enveloped, time to write it; secondly, that he had the courage to oppose and publish his own opinions to the universal opinion of America, and, indeed, of all mankind." The opinions to which he alludes were supposed to be of an aristocratical complexion. If Adams had a political system to convey, it is to be regretted he did not adopt a clearer and more methodical form of writing about it.*

The year 1817 brought to Adams a great personal affliction, in the death of his wife, his published correspondence with whom has created a lasting interest with posterity, in the intellectual and patriotic resources of his home. This lady, whose maiden name was Abigail Smith, was the daughter of a Congregational clergyman at Weymouth. She was married in her twentieth year, in 1764. Often separated from her husband by the employments of his public life, the correspondence between the two was a matter of necessity, and in her hands became a pleasure as well. Her style is spirited: she shows herself versed in public affairs; with a good taste in the poetic reading of the times.t

The last years of Adams were passed in the retirement of a scholar and a politician, at his farm at Quincy, till the dramatic termination of his

Fessenden (Christopher Caustic), in one of the notes to his Democracy Unveiled, speaks of "the tricks of the shuffling Jacobins of the present period (1806), who mutilate, garble, and misquote Adams's Defence of the American Constitution, in order to show that the author of a treatise witten in defence of a republican form of government is at heart a monarchist." + The letters of Mrs. Adams, with a memoir by her grandson, C. F. Adams, were published in two volumes, in 1840; followed, the next year, by a similar publication of the letters of John Adams, addressed to his wife. The latter are three hundred in number. The journal and correspondence of Miss Adams, the wife of Col. Smith, Secretary to the American Legation at London, the daughter of John Adams, were published in New York, in two vols. 1841-2. Edited by her daughter, Mrs. J. P. De Wint,