neither the health of Mr. Adams, nor his business, admitted of his constant application to public affairs in the manner that distinguished his kinsman, Samuel Adams, during the years preceding the breaking out of the Revolution. If the sum of that application is to be measured by the frequency of his appearance before the public as an actor in an official character upon the scene, the remark is true; for up to the year 1774 he had served but once or twice as a representative in the General Court, and in no other situation. But this would furnish a very unfair standard by which to try the extent of his labors for the public. Very often, as much is done by beforehand preparing the public mind for action, as by the conduct of that action after it has been commenced; although the visible amount of exertion, by which alone the world forms its judgments, is in the two cases widely different. From the time of his marriage, in 1764, perhaps still earlier, when he, as a young lawyer, in 1761, took notes of the argument in the celebrated cause of the Writs of Assistants, there is evidence constantly presented of his active interest in the Revolutionary struggle. There is hardly a year in the interval between the earliest of these dates and 1774, that the traces of his hand are not visible in the newspapers of Boston, elaborately discussing the momentous questions which preceded the crisis. It was during this period that the "Essay on Canon and Feudal Law" was written. A long controversy with Major Brattle, upon the payment of the Judges, and the papers of "Novanglus," were other, though by no means all, the results of his labors. He drafted several of the papers of Instructions to the Representatives to the General Court, both in Boston and in his native town, and also some of the most elaborate legal portions of the celebrated controversy between that body and Governor Hutchinson. The tendency, which all these papers show, to seek for political truth in its fundamental principles and most abstract forms, whilst it takes off much from the interest with which the merely general reader would now consider them, is yet of historical importance, as establishing the fact, how little of mere impulse there was in his mode of action against the mother country. They also show the extent of the studies to which his mind applied itself, and the depth of the foundation laid by him for his subsequent career. Yet, during all this time, his professional labors were never intermitted, and ceased only with the catastrophe which shut up the courts of justice and rendered exertion upon a different theatre absolutely necessary to the maintenance of the fabric of society.

Perhaps the preceding detail belongs more properly to a memoir of Mr. Adams than that of his wife. Yet it would be impossible to furnish any accurate idea of her character without explaining the precise nature of the influences acting upon her, whilst still young, and when that character was taking its permanent form. There was no one who witnessed his studies with greater interest, or who sympathized with him in the conclusions to which his mind was forcing him, more deeply, than Mrs. Adams. And hence it was, that, as the day of trial came, and the hour for action drew near, she was found not unprepared to submit to the lot appointed her. Mr. Adams was elected one of the delegates on the part of Massachusetts, instructed to meet persons chosen in the same manner from the other colonies, for the purpose of consulting in common upon the course most advisable to be adopted by them. In the month of August, 1774, he left home, in company with Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, and Robert Treat Paine, to go to Philadelphia, at which place the proposed assembly was to be held. It is from this period that the correspondence between these parties, now submitted, becomes interesting. The letter of the 19th of August of this year[3] portrays her own feelings upon this, the first separation of importance from her husband, and the anxiety with which she was watching the course of events. Yet there is in it not a syllable of regret for the past or of fear for the future; but, on the contrary, an acute perception of the obstacles in the way of an immediate return to peaceful times, and a deliberate preparation, by reading and reflection, for the worst. The Congress confined itself, in its first sessions, to consultation and remonstrance. It therefore adjourned after the lapse of only two months. It is during this time that the letters in the present volume which bear date in 1774 were written. They furnish a lively exhibition of the state of public feeling in Massachusetts. That dated on the 14th of September is particularly interesting, as it gives an account of the securing the gunpowder from the British, in her own town of Braintree, as well as a highly characteristic trait of New England, in the refusal to cheer on a Sunday. The last of this series, dated on the 16th of October, shows that all remaining hopes of peace and reconciliation were fast vanishing from her mind; and in an affecting manner she "bids adieu to domestic felicity perhaps until the meeting with her husband in another world, since she looks forward to nothing further in this than sacrifices, as the result of the impending contest."[4]

The second meeting of the Congress, which took place in May, 1775, was marked by events which wholly changed the nature of its deliberations. Up to that period, the struggle had been only a dispute. It then took the more fearful shape of a war. Mr. Adams left his house and family at Braintree on the 14th of April, only five days before the memorable incident at Lexington, which was a signal for the final appeal to arms. The news of the affair reached him at Hartford, on his way to Philadelphia. General Gage had planned his attack upon Lexington with the knowledge that John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two of the delegates to the general Congress, were in that place at the time; and it was probably one of his objects to seize them, if they could be found. Gordon, the historian, attributes their escape only to a friendly warning given them by a woman residing in Boston, but "unequally yoked in politics." There was nearly the same reason for apprehension on the part of John Adams. His house was situated still nearer to Boston, could be more easily approached by water, and his family, if not he himself, was known to be residing there. Under these circumstances, what the feelings of Mrs. Adams, left with the care of four small children, the eldest not ten years of age, must have been, may readily be conceived. But the letters in which she describes them bring the idea home to the mind with still greater force. She tells us that upon the separation from her husband "her heart had felt like a heart of lead," and that "she never trusts herself long with the terrors that sometimes intrude themselves upon her;" that "since the never-to-be-forgotten day of his departure, the 14th of April, nothing had agitated her so much as the news of the arrival of recruits;" and that "she lives in continual expectation of alarms." Neither were these apprehensions altogether groundless. The letter of the 4th of May mentions that Colonel Quincy's family, whose residence was nearer to the water-side than hers, had taken refuge for one night with her. That of the 24th gives a highly vivid picture of the consternation into which the whole town was thrown by a party of British, foraging upon an island in the harbor, close upon the town. Then follows the account of the battle on Bunker's