The Portland daily press., 1874-05-29
Fiftv.three Years of American History
1895 to 1S4S.
THE LIFE OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS CoMPIL-
ED FROM HIS DIARY.
From the New York Herald


The chief attraction OF this work for most
readers will consist in the interesting glImpses
which it constantly affords of the public men
with whom John Quincy Adams was asso-
ciated or came in contact during his long and
varied career at home and abroad, as Minis
ter to Holland, to Berlin, to st, Petersburg,
to London, as the head of the commission for
negotiating the treaty of Client, as Secretery
of State during the four years of Monroe's
administration, as President, as member of
Congress for eighteen years after his retire.
ment from that high Office with fame which
caused him to be sought by all persons of dis
tinction visiting or residing at Washington,
he had probably seen, conversed and acted
with more people OF celebrity than any other
man of his time. The diary is a repository
of his observations set down when the i'm
pressions were fresh, and having consequent
ly an engaging air of reality. Even the basty
judgments that are sometimes recorded seem
to keep up the interest which would not at
tend cold, studied performance.
We have not space for extended quota
tions, but will try to give an idea of Mr.. Ad-
ANS manner in the lighter portions of the di-
ary by referring to the entries made on sever
al occasions after dining at the table of Presi-
dent Jefferson. John Quincy Adams ac-
quaintance with Jefferson commenced in his
boyhood, when he accompanied his father to
Paris. The old man made touching allusion
to the great fancy which Jefferson took to
the boy in a letter to jefferson, written just
after John Quincy's election to the Presiden-
cy, in which he apologized for speaking of
him as "our john" The proud and gratified
father, then close upon his nineteth year,
said: Il call him our John, because when
you were at Paris he appeared to me TO be al
most as much your boy as mine. l have Of
ten speculated upon the consequences that
would have ensued from my taking your ad-
vice to send him to William and Mary Col
lege, in Virginia, for an education" 1t was
no new thing for John Quincy Adams to
dine frequently at Mr.. Jefferson's, when he
went to Washington as Senator from Mass
achusetts. His opinion OF that stateman's
conversation cannot be considered as that OF
novice. So much has been written first
and last, of Jefferson's entertaining gifts as a
conversationalst without any specimen OF
his topics and manner in his lighter hours,
that we are glad to see the curtain lifted half
a century after his death, giving us an au-
thentic view of some Of his pecul' arities.
What seems to have struck Mr.. Adams most
was habit of strange exaggeIation. In one
place he says, "YOu can never be an hour in
this mans company without hearing some
thing of the marvellous, like these Stories"
One of the stories alluded to was Jefferson's
statement that he had learned the Spanish
language "with the help of Don Quixote
lent him by Mr.. Cabot, and a grammar, in
the course of a passage to Europe, in which
he was not nineteen days at sea-" The real
marvel is that a man SO intelligent as John
Quincy Adams should have thought this mar
velous. We have seen it stated somewhere
that Edward Everett learned Spanish in an
equally short space of time. OF course neither
he nor Jefferson meant to say that he had
learnt to speak it or to write it in so brief a
space, but only that he had acquired the
ability to read it, which is much easier at
| tainment. The language oil Spain is goth
| iciZed Latin, with a small infusion OF Arabic
| words derived from the Moorish occupation.
| A person who, like Jefferson, had long un-
| derstood Latin, and two languages so kin
| dred to Spanish as the French and Italian,
had merely to learn the grammatical changes
which had been superinduced upon Latin in
| its conversion into Spanish to understand
| nine words in every ten without any other
( help. The knowledge in Jeferson's case was
| facilitated by beginning with so familiar a
| book rs 'Don QuixOte," which he had
doubtless read repeatedly in English or French
| translations, the well-knOwn story rendering
( doubtful words ineligible. Some OF Mr..
( Adams other examples were more to the
point. cat the table he told us of Mr.
| Bergasse, whom he saw at Marseilles, a IA
| nous manufacturer OF wines, who told hin
| that he would make any sort of wine h
would name, and in any quantities, at six O
eight soils the bottle, and, though Their
should not be drop of genuine wine in tn
composition, yet it should so perfectly imi
tate the taste that the most refined connois
seur should not be able to tell which wa
which," On another occasion, after dining
at JeAerson's, Mr.. Adams said, in the diary
''his itch for telling projigious stories IS uh at
abated." Speaking of cold, Jefferson sau oto,
sin n ParisS Pa @ at % twenty degrees below zero, and
that but I for "a single day, but for six weeks 6
4 that never in the whole time was it SO higt
as sss zero. row which is '.ffty'' degrees below the