degree of influence over the public conduct of her husband, far greater than there was any foundation for in truth. Perhaps it is giving more than its due importance to this idea to take any notice at all of it in this place. But the design of this Memoir is to set forth, in as clear a light as possible, the character of its subject; and this cannot well be done without a full explanation of her personal relations to those about her. That her opinions, even upon public affairs, had at all times great weight with her husband, is unquestionably true, for he frequently marked upon her letters his testimony to their solidity; but there is no evidence that they either originated or materially altered any part of the course he had laid out for himself. Whenever she differed in sentiment from him, which was sometimes the case, she perfectly well understood her own position, and that the best way of recommending her views was by entire concession. The character of Mr. Adams is clearly visible in his own papers. Ardent, vehement in support of what he believed to be right, easily roused to anger by opposition, but sincere, placable, and generous, when made conscious of having committed the slightest wrong, there is no individual of his time about whom there are so few concealments of either faults or virtues. She was certain that a word said, not at the moment of irritation, but immediately after it had passed, would receive great consideration from him. She therefore waited the favorable time, and thus, by the calmness of her judgment, exercised a species of negative influence, which often prevented evil consequences from momentary indiscretion. But her power extended no further, nor did she seek to make it do so, and in this consisted her principal merit. Perhaps it may be added, that to men of ardent and excitable temperament no virtue is more necessary in a wife, and none more essential to the happiness and prosperity of both the parties, than that which has been now described.

From the year 1801 down to the day of her death, which happened on the 28th of October, 1818, she remained uninterruptedly at home in Quincy. This period furnishes abundance of familiar letters. Her interest in public affairs did not cease with the retirement of her husband. She continued to write to her friends her free opinions, both of men and measures, perhaps with a more sustained hand on account of the share her son was then taking in politics. But these letters bring us down to times so recent that they carry us beyond the limits contemplated in the present publication. On some accounts, this is perhaps to be regretted. None of her letters present a more agreeable picture of life, or a more characteristic idea of their author, than these. The old age of Mrs. Adams was not one of grief and repining, of clouds and darkness. Her cheerfulness continued, with the full possession of her faculties, to the last; and her sunny spirit enlivened the small social circle around her, brightened the solitary hours of her husband, and spread the influence of its example over the town where she lived. "Yesterday," she writes to a granddaughter on the 26th of October, 1814, "yesterday completes half a century since I entered the married state, then just your age. I have great cause of thankfulness, that I have lived so long and enjoyed so large a portion of happiness as has been my lot. The greatest source of unhappiness I have known in that period has arisen from the long and cruel separations which I was called, in a time of war and with a young family around me, to submit to." Yet she had not been without her domestic afflictions. A daughter lost in infancy; a son, grown up to manhood, who died in 1800; and, thirteen years afterwards, the death of her only remaining daughter, the wife of Colonel W. S. Smith, furnished causes of deep and severe grief, which threw a shadow of sadness over the evening of her life. But they produced no permanent gloom, nor did they prevent her from enjoying the consolations to be found in gratitude to the Divine Being for the blessings that still remained to her. She was rewarded for the painful separation from her eldest son, when he went abroad in the public service under circumstances which threatened a long absence, by surviving the whole period of eight years that it lasted, and witnessing his return to receive from the Chief Magistrate elect, Mr. Monroe, the highest testimony he could give him of his confidence. This was the fulfillment of the wish nearest to her heart. His nomination as Secretary of State was the crowning mercy of her life. Had she survived the attack of the fever which proved fatal, it is true that she might have seen him exalted still higher, to that station which her husband and his father had held before him; but it is very doubtful whether her satisfaction would have been at all enhanced. The commencement of Mr. Monroe's administration was marked by a unanimity of the popular voice, the more gratifying to her because it was something so new. Later times have only carried us back to party divisions, of the bitterness of which she had during her lifetime tasted too largely to relish even the little of sweet which they might have to give.

The obsequies of Mrs. Adams were attended by a great concourse of people, who voluntarily came to pay this last tribute to her memory. Several brief but beautiful notices of her appeared in the newspapers of the day, and a sermon was preached by the late Reverend Dr. Kirkland, then President of Harvard University, which closed with a delicate and affecting testimony to her worth. "Ye will seek to mourn, bereaved friends," it says, "as becomes Christians, in a manner worthy of the person you lament. You do, then, bless the Giver of life, that the course of your endeared and honored friend was so long and so bright; that she entered so fully into the spirit of those injunctions which we have explained, and was a minister of blessings to all within her influence. You are soothed to reflect that she was sensible of the many tokens of divine goodness which marked her lot; that she received the good of her existence with a cheerful and grateful heart; that, when called to weep, she bore adversity with an equal mind; that she used the world as not abusing it to excess, improving well her time, talents, and opportunities, and, though desired longer in this world, was fitted for a better happiness than this world can give."

It often happens that when the life of a woman is the topic of discussion, men think it necessary either to fall into a tone of affected gallantry and unmeaning compliment or to assume the extreme of unnatural and extravagant eulogy. Yet there seems no reason, in the nature of things, why the same laws of composition should not be made to apply to the one sex as to the other. It has been the wish of the Editor to avoid whatever might be considered as mere empty praise of his subject, in which, if he has not altogether succeeded, some allowance may, it is hoped, be made for the natural bias under which he writes. It has been his purpose to keep far within the line marked out by the great master of composition, who, in allusion to the first instance in Rome when a woman, Popilia, was publicly praised by her son Catulus, defines the topics which may be treated with propriety upon any similar occasion.[10] He does not claim for the letters now published to the world that they are models of style, though in behalf of some of them such a claim might, perhaps, be reasonably urged; nor yet that they contain much novel or important historical information. What merit they may have will be found in the pictures of social life which they