solitary
and even contemptuous gladiatorship against the entire government of the
country, for long years of hate and peril. The father's irritable though
generous vanity changed in the son to an icy contempt or white-hot scorn
of nearly all around him. The father's spasms of acrimonious judgment
steadied in the son to a constant rancor always finding new objects. But
only John Quincy Adams could have done the work awaiting John Quincy
Adams, and each of his unamiable qualities strengthened his fibre to do
it. And if a man is to be judged by his fruits, Mr. Morse is justified
in saying that he was "not only pre-eminent in ability and acquirements,
but even more to be honored for profound, immutable honesty of purpose,
and broad, noble humanity of aims."

[Illustration: John Q. Adams.]

It might almost be said that the sixth President of the United States
was cradled in statesmanship. Born July 11th, 1767, he was a little lad
of ten when he accompanied his father on the French mission. Eighteen
months elapsed before he returned, and three months later he was again
upon the water, bound once more for the French capital. There were
school days in Paris, and other school days in Amsterdam and in Leyden;
but the boy was only fourteen,--the mature old child!--when he went to
St. Petersburg as private secretary and interpreter to Francis Dana,
just appointed minister plenipotentiary to the court of the Empress
Catherine. Such was his apprenticeship to a public career which began in
earnest in 1794, and lasted, with slight interruptions, for
fifty-four years. Minister to the United Netherlands, to Russia, to
Prussia, and to England; commissioner to frame the Treaty of Ghent which
ended the war of 1812; State Senator, United States Senator; Secretary
of State, a position in which he made the treaty with Spain which
conceded Florida, and enunciated the Monroe Doctrine before Monroe and
far more thoroughly than he; President, and then for many years Member
of the National House of Representatives,--it is strange to find this
man writing in his later years, "My whole life has been a succession of
disappointments. I can scarcely recollect a single instance of success
to anything that I ever undertook."

It is true, however, that his successes and even his glories always had
some bitter ingredient to spoil their flavor. As United States Senator
he was practically "boycotted" for years, even by his own party members,
because he wa