cules are an image of the struggles of humanity, and an emblem of the sun, in which men saw the spirit of nature; and the self-immolation of Hercules upon Eta, as well as the emblematic phoenix, signifies perfection and purification through conflict, sorrow and decay. Wherever pure truth and goodness, free from all human imperfection and impurity, manifest themselves in unclouded radiance before the eyes of men, there God himself has appeared to them."-pp. 353–357.

The ideas that lie under the burden of this intolerable verbiage are partly true and partly false, but chiefly that "middle nonsense which is neither true nor false." No wonder his dear Hildegard, the best judge in the world, should at the close exclaim, "I thank you for these beautiful reflections." The whole Catholic church, in which she had been educated, from Cyprian down, and the whole Protestant church, too, in which Theodore had grown up wild in the midst of culture, might join with Hildegard in her further commendation: "In this general sense I have never regarded the death of Jesus before." Theodore replies, "We must regard both this and the whole history of Jesus in some such way, if we would not run into one of the two extremes, the merely human view, and the unfruitful and soulless view of the Supernaturalists." If by fruit he mean such as is to be gathered from this book, and by soul, that which is the burden of his extatic effusions, the sentence pronounced against the Supernaturalists is perfectly just.

The author appears to us about as logical, and sober, and devout, as one who should assert that the ground proper for the foot of man to rest upon is equidistant from the earth and the nearest planet. 'Man differs from the rest of the lower creation,' such an one might say, 'by having a countenance directed heavenward. True, the physical part of our nature tends downward to the earth; but then this gross matter, which alone would ally us to the material, the perishing, and the finite, is penetrated by spirit, which is, in its own nature, volatile, and tends to the infinite.' Struggling between these two opposite forces or polarities, between what the holy apostle calls the spiritual and the carnal in man, and strengthened by the memory of the ascension, the type and the pledge, the prediction and the fulfilment of the conquest of the volatile spirit over gross matter, for the spirit of God moved over the primal waters of creation,-it is ours,-and this betokens the godlike in man,-to dwell with the Lord in the air. EDITOR.

ARTICLE VI.

THE ADAMS CORRESPONDENCE.

Letters of Mrs. Adams, the wife of John Adams, with an Introductory Memoir, by her Grandson CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 2 vols. Second edition. Boston. 1840. Letters of John Adams, addressed to his Wife. Edited by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 2 vols. Boston. 1841.

THE Letters of Mrs. Adams reached a second edition many months ago; and the interest with which they have. been received, is understood to have given rise to the publication of those of her husband. Though this correspondence probably contains no important materials for history, which had not before been garnered up, yet it is not without a high value for the light it throws on many movements of the times in which it was written; and withal it possesses an interest altogether novel, from the illustration it affords of the private life and domestic character of one of the most illustrious men of the period of the American revolution. The stern and somewhat uncompromising character in which John Adams appears in history is presented in a milder and more amiable aspect, in that portion of these letters which are from his pen. There is the same invincible resolution, the same patriotic devotion to the interests of the country, and something of the same reserve and distrust; but blended as these qualities here are with the feelings of friendship and the affections of a husband, they awaken a far deeper interest than when they stand, as it were, alone in his character, as we survey him amidst the trials and labors of public stations. The revolutionary statesman here lays aside the ambition, the cares and toils incident to the most trying period of our national existence, and betrays the simple affections of humanity, unveils the inner sanctuary of his heart, and utters the thoughts and feelings which belong only to the more private and sacred relations of life.

VOL. VI.-NO. XXIV.

71

To the volumes which contain the letters of Mrs. Adams the editor has prefixed a very interesting memoir of her life, from which we learn to estimate many of the influences that formed her character, and gave to it the strength and elevation for which it was so remarkable. Mrs. Adams was of Puritan descent. Her maiden name was Abigail Smith. She was born on the 11th of November, 1744, O. S., in the town of Weymouth, where her father was the "minister of the Congregational church during the middle of the last century." Her life began at one of the most interesting periods of New England history, a time when the Puritan character having laid aside something of its original sternness, was manifesting its most benignant social spirit, and the people of this country were developing, on every side, the best energies of their minds and the ample resources of their hitherto wilderness home. Her early years seem to have been passed chiefly amidst the rural scenes of her native town, the rustic simplicity of whose manners and modes of life the near neighborhood of the capital had not yet begun to change. Education in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, like most other social interests, was at that time in its infancy. Harvard College, it is true, had begun to exert its influence upon the young men of the colony, but seminaries for the education of the mass of the rising generation, and particularly for the training of the female mind, were very few. Mrs. Adams says of herself, "I never was sent to any school. Female education, in the best families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." It was to other influences rather than the lessons of the school-room, that she was indebted for her rare facility of composition, as well as for the sagacity and soundness of judgment which carried her with so much steadiness through the trials and exigencies of domestic life in a most troubled period, and attained for her a high rank among the most intellectual women of her time. It is not always the study of books or the repeating of lessons that forms the most valuable part of mental education. Away from schools and instructers, amidst the sports of playmates or the companionship of superiors, it often happens that the young mind is made acquainted with its own strength, and learns to trust its own powers. The scenes of nature that impress

so deeply the spirit of childhood, the changes of the household, the models of character presented in the conversation of the old and the experienced, the appearance of mystery that seems to hang over every thing in life; all these may serve to give activity and even discipline to a young and gifted mind whose attention is rightly directed, which books alone would fail to bestow. Thus, we apprehend, it was with the early years of Mrs. Adams. Though in the retirement of the country, her mind did not stagnate, but, amidst the influences exerted over it by surrounding objects, it was kept in perpetual activity. At that day the traditions of the Pilgrims were still fresh in memory, and their religious spirit had not become extinct. Besides this, the relations of the colonies to each other and to the mother country were furnishing topics of almost constant excitement to the minds of that generation. In the midst of such influences, in addition to those which came from the counsels of her parents and of her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Quincy, whom she seems always to have venerated, we are at no loss to account for the superior character which we find exhibited throughout these letters. It was the discipline of life that waked the faculties of her mind, and imparted to them their moral tone, and its results prove it to have been equally efficacious with the more learned instructions which mould the female character of our own school-taught generation. Mrs. Adams, though but little indebted to others for her education, was by no means ignorant of books. Her letters furnish abundant proof that she had read, and laid up in the stores of a retentive memory, the best works of the poets and essayists of English literature. Of the letters of her early friendship, the editor has admitted into these volumes only a few specimens. The mass of them were written after her marriage, and of these the larger number were addressed to her husband and her sons during their absence from home.

The marriage of Mrs. Adams took place on the 25th of October, 1764, at nearly the close of her twentieth year. In connection with this event, we extract from the Memoir a paragraph illustrative of the character of her father, and, indeed, we may say, of a large class of the New England clergy of that early period.

"The father of Mrs. Adams was a pious man, with something of that vein of humor, not uncommon among the clergy of New England, which ordinarily found such a field for exercise as is displayed in the pages of Cotton Mather. He was the father of three daughters, all of them women of uncommon force of intellect, though the fortunes of two of them confined its influence to a sphere much more limited than that which fell to the lot of Mrs. Adams. Mary, the eldest, was married, in 1762, to Richard Cranch, an English emigrant, who had settled at Germantown, a part of Braintree, and who subsequently became a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Massachusetts, and died, highly respected, in the early part of the present century. The present William Cranch, of Washington, who has presided so long, and with so much dignity and fidelity, over the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, is the son of this marriage. Elizabeth, the youngest, was twice married; first, to the Rev. John Shaw, minister of Haverhill, in Massachusetts, and, after his death, to the Rev. Mr. Peabody, of Atkinson, New Hampshire. Thus much is necessary to be stated, in order to explain the relations, which the parties, in many of the letters, bore to each other. It is an anecdote, told of Mr. Smith, that, upon the marriage of his eldest daughter, he preached to his people from the text in the fortysecond verse of the tenth chapter of Luke, ‘And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.' Two years elapsed, and his second daughter, the subject of this notice, was about to marry John Adams, then a lawyer in good practice, when some disapprobation of the match appears to have manifested itself among a portion of his parishioners. The profession of law was, for a long period in the colonial history of Massachusetts, unknown; and, after circumstances called it forth, the prejudices of the inhabitants, who thought it a calling hardly honest, were arrayed against those who adopted it. There are many still living, who can remember how strong they remained, even down to the time of the adoption of the present Federal Constitution; and the records of the General Court, at its very last session, of 1840, will show, that they have not quite disappeared at this day. Besides this, the family of Mr. Adams, the son of a small farmer of the middle class in Braintree, was thought scarcely good enough to match with the minister's daughter, descended from so many of the shining lights of the colony. It is probable, that Mr. Smith was made aware of the opinions expressed among his people, for he is said, immediately after the marriage took place, to have replied to them by a sermon, the text of which, in evident allusion to the objection against lawyers, was drawn from Luke 7: 33; “For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say, He hath a devil.”—Mem. pp. xxxi―xxxiii.

During the ten years immediately succeeding their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Adams lived quietly at their home in Braintree, or in Boston, and by the close of this period they had become the parents of a daughter and three sons, whose names and characters are often the topics of affectionate interest in this correspondence. These were years to which both seem to have recurred with unmingled pleasure, even amidst the distinguished honors with