portraits in
the gallery except only the inimitable one of the writer himself. For
it would be altogether too discouraging to think that so wide an
experience of men as Mr. Adams enjoyed through his long, varied, and
active life must lead to such an unpleasant array of human faces (p. 010)
as those which are scattered along these twelve big octavos.
Fortunately at present we have to do with only one of these
likenesses, and that one we are able to admire while knowing also that
it is beyond question accurate. One after another every trait of Mr.
Adams comes out; we shall see that he was a man of a very high and
noble character veined with some very notable and disagreeable
blemishes; his aspirations were honorable, even the lowest of them
being more than simply respectable; he had an avowed ambition, but it
was of that pure kind which led him to render true and distinguished
services to his countrymen; he was not only a zealous patriot, but a
profound believer in the sound and practicable tenets of the liberal
political creed of the United States; he had one of the most honest
and independent natures that was ever given to man; personal integrity
of course goes without saying, but he had the rarer gift of an
elevated and rigid political honesty such as has been unfrequently
seen in any age or any nation; in times of severe trial this quality
was even cruelly tested, but we shall never see it fail; he was as
courageous as if he had been a fanatic; indeed, for a long part of his
life to maintain a single-handed fight in support of a despised or
unpopular opinion seemed his natural function and almost exclusive
calling; he was thoroughly conscientious and never knowingly did (p. 011)
wrong, nor even sought to persuade himself that wrong was right;
well read in literature and of wide and varied information in nearly
all matters of knowledge, he was more especially remarkable for his
acquirements in the domain of politics, where indeed they were vast
and ever growing; he had a clear and generally a cool head, and was
nearly always able to do full justice to himself and to his cause; he
had an indomitable will, unconquerable persistence, and infinite
laboriousness. Such were the qualities which made him a great
statesman; but unfortunately we must behold a hardly less striking
reverse to the picture, in the faults and shortcomings which made him
so unpopular in his lifetime that posterity is only just beginning to
forget