Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. | Page 9

time, acquiesce in his recall.
While waiting for the decision of his government, he travelled, with his
family, in Saxony and Bohemia, and, in the ensuing summer, into
Silesia. His observations during this tour were embodied in letters to
his brother, Thomas B. Adams, and were published, without his
authority, in Philadelphia, and subsequently in England. The work
contains interesting sketches of Silesian life and manners, and
important accounts of manufactures, mines, and localities; concluding
with elaborate historical, geographical, and statistical statements of the
province.
The following passages are characteristic, and indicate the general
spirit of the work. "Count Finkenstein resides in this vicinity. He was
formerly president of the judicial tribunal at Custrin, but was dismissed
by Frederic II., on the occasion of the miller Arnold's famous lawsuit;
an instance in which the great king, from mere love of justice,
committed the greatest injustice that ever cast a shade upon his
character. His anxiety, upon that occasion, to prove to the world that in
his courts of justice the beggar should be upon the same footing as the
prince, made him forget that in substantial justice the maxim ought to
bear alike on both sides, and that the prince should obtain his right as
much as the beggar. Count Finkenstein and several other judges of the
court at Custrin, together with the High Chancellor Fürst, were all
dismissed from their places, for doing their duty, and persisting in it,
contrary to the will of the king, who, substituting his ideas of natural
equity in place of the prescriptions of positive law, treated them with
the utmost severity, for conduct which ought to have received his
fullest approbation."
"Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Watts, has bestowed a just and exalted
encomium upon him for not disdaining to descend from the pride of
genius and the dignity of science to write for the wants and the
capacities of children. 'Every man acquainted,' says he, 'with the
common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the
writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a
catechism for children in their fourth year.' But how much greater still

is the tribute of admiration, irresistibly drawn from us, when we behold
an absolute monarch, the greatest general of his age, eminent as a
writer in the highest departments of literature, descending, in a manner,
to teach the alphabet to the children of his kingdom; bestowing his care,
his persevering assiduity, his influence and his power, in diffusing plain
and useful knowledge among his subjects, in opening to their minds the
first and most important page of the book of science, in filling the
whole atmosphere they breathed with that intellectual fragrance which
had before been imprisoned in the vials of learning, or enclosed within
the gardens of wealth! Immortal Frederic! when seated on the throne of
Prussia, with kneeling millions at thy feet, thou wert only a king; on the
fields of Lutzen, of Torndoff, of Rosbach, of so many other scenes of
human blood and anguish, thou wert only a hero; even in thy rare and
glorious converse with the muses and with science thou wert only a
philosopher, a historian, a poet; but in this generous ardor, this active,
enlightened zeal for the education of thy people, thou wert truly
great--the father of thy country--the benefactor of mankind!"
In 1801, Mr. Adams received from his government permission to return
home. After taking leave with the customary formalities, he left Berlin,
sailed from Hamburg, and on the 4th of September, 1801, arrived in the
United States. During his residence in Berlin his time was devoted to
official labor and intellectual improvement; yet his letters show that he
was seldom, if ever, self-satisfied, being filled with aspirations after
something higher and better than he could accomplish. His translations,
at this period, embraced many satires of Juvenal, and Wieland's Oberon
from the original, into English verse; the last he intended for the press,
had it not been superseded by the version of Sotheby. He also
translated from the German a treatise, by Gentz, on the origin and
principles of the American Revolution, which he finished and
transmitted to the United States for publication, eulogizing it "as one of
the clearest accounts that exist of the rise and progress of the American
Revolution, in so small a compass; rescuing it from the disgraceful
imputation of its having proceeded from the same principles, and of its
being conducted in the same spirit, as that of France. This error has
nowhere been more frequently repeated, nowhere been of more
pernicious tendency, than in America itself."

The last years of Mr. Adams' residence at the Court of Berlin were
painfully affected by the bitter party animadversions which assailed his
father's administration, and which did