what is the purpose for which we have here assembled to do honor to his memory? Is it to scatter perishable flowers upon the yet unsodded grave of a public benefactor? Is it to mingle tears of sympathy and of consolation, with those of mourning and bereaved children? Is it to do honor to ourselves, by manifesting a becoming sensibility, at the departure of one, who, by a long career of honor and of usefulness, has been to us all as a friend and brother? Or is it not rather to mark the memorable incidents of a life signalized by all the properties which embody the precepts of virtue and the principles of wisdom? Is it not to pause for a moment from the passions of our own bosoms, and the agitations of our own interests, to survey in its whole extent the long and little beaten path of the great and the good: to fix with intense inspection our own vision, and to point the ardent but unsettled gaze of our children upon that resplendent row of cresset lamps, fed with the purest vital air, which illuminate the path of the hero, the statesman and the sage. Have you a son of ardent feelings and ingenuous mind, docile to instruction, and panting for honorable distinction? point him to the pallid cheek and agonizing form of James Monroe, at the opening blossom of life, weltering in his blood on the field of Trenton, for the cause of his country. Then turn his eye to the same form, seven years later, in health and vigor, still in the bloom of youth, but seated among the Conscript Fathers of the land, to receive entwined with all its laurels the sheathed and triumphant sword of Washington. Guide his eye along to the same object, investigating, by the midnight lamp, the laws of nature and nations, and unfolding them at once, with all the convictions of reason and all the persuasions of eloquence, to demonstrate the rights of his countrymen to the contested navigation of the Mississippi, in the hall of Congress. Follow him with this trace in his hand, through a long series of years, by laborious travels and intricate negociations, at imperial courts, and in the palaces of kings, winding his way amidst the ferocious and party-colored revolutions of France, and the lifeguard favorites and Camarillas of Spain. Then look at the map of United North America, as it was at the definitive peace of 1783. Compare it with the map of that same empire as it is now; limited by the Sabine and the Pacific Ocean, and say, the change, more than of any other man, living or dead, was the work of James Monroe. See him pass successively from the hall of the Confederation Congress to the Legislative Assembly of his native commonwealth; to their Convention which ratified the Constitution of the North American people; to the Senate of the Union; to the chair of diplomatic intercourse with ultra revolutionary France; back to the executive honors of his native State; again to embassies of transcendent magnitude, to France, to Spain, to Britain; restored once more to retirement and his country; elevated again to the highest trust of his State; transferred successively to the two pre-eminent Departments of Peace and War, in the National Government; and at the most momentous crisis burthened with the duties of both and finally raised, first by the suffrages of a majority, and at last by the unanimous call of his countrymen to the Chief Magistracy of the Union. There behold him, for a term of eight years, strengthening his country for defence by a system of combined fortifications, military and

naval, sustaining her rights, her dignity and honor abroad; soothing her dissensions, and conciliating her acerbities at home; controlling, by a firm though peaceful policy, the hostile spirit of the European Alliance against Republican Southern America; extorting, by the mild compulsion of reason, the shores of the Pacific from the stipulated acknowledgment of Spain; and leading back the Imperial Autocrat of the North, to his lawful boundaries, from his hastily asserted dominion over the Southern Ocean. Thus strengthening and consolidating the federative edifice of his country's union, till he was entitled to say, like Augustus Cæsar, of his imperial city, that he had found her built of brick and left her constructed of marble."

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

*JOHN QUINCY ADAMS is descended from a race of farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics. In 1630, his remote ancestor, Henry Adams, came to America, with seven sons, and established himself in this country. Thus early rooted in the soil, a warm attachment to the cause and the rights of America has been, from generation to generation, the birthright of this family.

The first of this name, who emerged from private life, and rose to conspicuous public stations, were Samuel Adams, the proscribed patriot of the Revolution, and John Adams, who was pronounced by his venerable copatriot, Thomas Jefferson, "The Colossus of Independence." These two distinguished benefactors of their country, were descendants of the same remote ancestor. Samuel Adams deceased without male issue; John Quincy Adams is the son of his illustrious fellow laborer and relative. He was born in the year 1767, and was named for John Quincy, his great-grandfather, who bore a distinguished part in the councils of the province, at the commencement of the last century.

The principles of American Independence and freedom were instilled into the mind of Mr. John Q. Adams, in the very dawn of his existence. Both of his revered parents had entered, with every power and faculty, into the cause of the country. When the father of Mr. Adams repaired to France as joint commissioner with Franklin and Lee, he was accompanied by his son John Quincy, then in his eleventh year. In this country he passed a year and a half with his father, and enjoyed the enviable privilege of the daily intercourse and parental attentions of Benjamin Franklin; whose kind notice of the young was a peculiar trait in his character, and whose primitive simplicity of manners and methodical habits left a lasting impression on the mind of his youthful countryman.

After a residence of about eighteen months in France, John Quincy Adams returned to America with his father, who came home to take part in the formation of the Constitution of his native State. After a sojourn of a few months at home, the voice of the country called on Mr. Adams' father again to repair to Europe as a commissioner for negociating a treaty of peace and commerce with Great Britain, whenever she might be disposed to put an end to the war.

He took his son with him. They sailed in a French frigate bound to Brest; but the vessel having sprung a dangerous leak, was obliged to put in the nearest port, which proved to be Ferrol, in Spain. From that

For the early part of this memoir we have been indebted to a biographical sketch, published at the time of the presidential canvass, which terminated in the election of General Jackson.

place Mr. Adams travelled by land to Paris, where he arrived in January, 1780, and when his son, J. Q. Adams, was put to school. In the month of July, of the same year, Mr. Adams repaired to Holland to negociate a loan in that country. His son accompanied him, and was placed first in the public school of the city of Amsterdam, and afterwards in the University of Leyden. In July, 1781, Mr. Francis Dana, (afterwards Chief Justice of the State of Massachusetts,) who had gone out with Mr. Adams, as Secretary of Legation, received, from the continental Congress, the commission of Minister to the Empress of Russia, and John Q. Adams was selected by Mr. Dana, as a private secretary of this mission. After spending fourteen months with Mr. Dana, he left him to return through Sweden, Denmark, Hamburgh, and Bremen, to Holland, where his father had been publicly received as Minister from the United States, and had concluded a commercial treaty with the republic of the Netherlands. He performed this journey during the winter of 1782-3, being sixteen years of age, without a companion. He reached the Hague in April, 1783, his father being at that time engaged at Paris in the negociation of peace. From April to July his son remained at the Hague under the care of Mr. Dumas, a native of Switzerland, a zealous friend of America, who then filled the office of an agent of the United States. The negociations for peace being suspended in July, Mr. Adams' father repaired on business to Amsterdam, and on his return to Paris he took his son with him. The definitive treaty of peace was signed in September, 1783, from which time till May, 1785, he was chiefly with his father in England, Holland, and France.

It was at that period, that he formed an acquaintance with Mr. Jefferson, then residing in France as American Minister. The intercourse of Mr. Jefferson with his former colleague, the father of Mr. Adams, was of an intimate and confidential kind, and led to a friendship for his son, which, formed in early life, scarcely suffered an interruption from subsequent political dissensions, and revived with original strength during the last years of the life of this venerable statesman.

Mr. Adams was, at the period last mentioned, about eighteen years of age. Born in the crisis of his country's fortunes, he had led a life of wandering and vicissitude, unusual at any age. His education, in every thing but the school of liberty, had been interrupted and irregular. He had seen much of the world-much of men-and had enjoyed but little leisure for books. Anxious to complete his education, and still more anxious to return to his native America, when his father was, in 1785, appointed Minister to the Court of St. James, his son, at that period of life when the pleasures and splendor of a city like London are most calculated to fascinate and mislead, asked permission of his father to go back to his native shores. This he accordingly did. On his return to America, he became a member of the ancient seat of learning at Cambridge, where, as early as 1743, Samuel Adams, in taking his degrees, had the proposition, "that the people have a just right of resistance, when oppressed by their rulers."

In July, 1787, Mr. Adams left college and entered the office of Theophilus Parsons, afterward Chief Justice of the State, as a student of