John Quincy Adams | Page 4

on the aforementioned second trip to Europe, calling it
A JOURNAL BY J. Q. A.,
From America to Spain.
Vol. I.
Begun Friday, 12 of November, 1779.
The spark of life in the great undertaking flickered in a somewhat
feeble and irregular way for many years thereafter, but apparently
gained strength by degrees until in 1795, as Mr. C. F. Adams tells us,
"what may be denominated the diary proper begins," a very vigorous
work in more senses than one. Continued with astonishing persistency
and faithfulness until within a few days of the writer's death, the latest
entry is of the 4th of January, 1848. Mr. Adams achieved many
successes during his life as the result of conscious effort, but (p. 007)
the greatest success of all he achieved altogether unconsciously. He left
a portrait of himself more full, correct, vivid, and picturesque than has
ever been bequeathed to posterity by any other personage of the past
ages. Any mistakes which may be made in estimating his mental or
moral attributes must be charged to the dulness or prejudice of the
judge, who could certainly not ask for better or more abundant
evidence. Few of us know our most intimate friends better than any of
us may know Mr. Adams, if we will but take the trouble. Even the brief
extracts already given from his correspondence show us the boy; it only
concerns us to get them into the proper light for seeing them accurately.
If a lad of seven, nine, or eleven years of age should write such solemn

little effusions amid the surroundings and influences of the present day,
he would probably be set down justly enough as either an offensive
young prig or a prematurely developed hypocrite. But the precocious
Adams had only a little of the prig and nothing of the hypocrite in his
nature. Being the outcome of many generations of simple, devout,
intelligent Puritan ancestors, living in a community which loved virtue
and sought knowledge, all inherited and all present influences
combined to make him, as it may be put (p. 008) in a single word,
sensible. He had inevitably a mental boyhood and youth, but morally
he was never either a child or a lad; all his leading traits of character
were as strongly marked when he was seven as when he was seventy,
and at an age when most young people simply win love or cause
annoyance, he was preferring wisdom to mischief, and actually in his
earliest years was attracting a certain respect.
These few but bold and striking touches which paint the boy are
changed for an infinitely more elaborate and complex presentation from
the time when the Diary begins. Even as abridged in the printing, this
immense work ranks among the half-dozen longest diaries to be found
in any library, and it is unquestionably by far the most valuable.
Henceforth we are to travel along its broad route to the end; we shall
see in it both the great and the small among public men halting onward
in a way very different from that in which they march along the stately
pages of the historian, and we shall find many side-lights, by no means
colorless, thrown upon the persons and events of the procession. The
persistence, fulness, and faithfulness with which it was kept throughout
so busy a life are marvellous, but are also highly characteristic of the
most persevering and industrious of men. (p. 009) That it has been
preserved is cause not only for thankfulness but for some surprise also.
For if its contents had been known, it is certain that all the public men
of nearly two generations who figure in it would have combined into
one vast and irresistible conspiracy to obtain and destroy it. There was
always a superfluity of gall in the diarist's ink. Sooner or later every
man of any note in the United States was mentioned in his pages, and
there is scarcely one of them, who, if he could have read what was said
of him, would not have preferred the ignominy of omission. As one
turns the leaves he feels as though he were walking through a

graveyard of slaughtered reputations wherein not many headstones
show a few words of measured commendation. It is only the greatness
and goodness of Mr. Adams himself which relieve the universal
atmosphere of sadness far more depressing than the melancholy which
pervades the novels of George Eliot. The reader who wishes to retain
any comfortable degree of belief in his fellow men will turn to the wall
all the 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,