only an incessant student in history, politics,
and literature, but he also constantly invaded the domain of science.
He was Chairman of the Congressional Committee on the Smithsonian
bequest, and for several years he gave much time and attention to it,
striving to give the fund a direction in favor of science; he (p. 304)
hoped to make it subservient to a plan which he had long cherished for
the building of a noble national observatory. He had much committee
work; he received many visitors; he secured hours of leisure for his
favorite pursuit of composing poetry; he delivered an enormous number
of addresses and speeches upon all sorts of occasions; he conducted an
extensive correspondence; he was a very devout man, regularly going to
church and reading three chapters in his Bible every day; and he kept
up faithfully his colossal Diary. For several months in the midst of
Congressional duties he devoted great labor, thought, and anxiety to
the famous cause of the slaves of the Amistad, in which he was induced
to act as counsel before the Supreme Court. Such were the labors of
his declining age. To men of ordinary calibre the multiplicity of his
acquirements and achievements is confounding and incredible. He worked
his brain and his body as unsparingly as if they had been machines
insensible to the pleasure or necessity of rest. Surprisingly did they
submit to his exacting treatment, lasting in good order and condition
far beyond what was then the average of life and vigorous faculties
among his contemporaries engaged in public affairs.

In August, 1842, while he was still tarrying in the unwholesome (p. 305)
heats of Washington, he had some symptoms which he thought premonitory,
and he speaks of the next session of Congress as probably the last
which he should ever attend. March 25, 1844, he gives a painful sketch
of himself. Physical disability, he says, must soon put a stop to his
Diary. That morning he had risen "at four, and with smarting,
bloodshot eyes and shivering hand, still sat down and wrote to fill up
the chasm of the closing days of last week." If his remaining days
were to be few he was at least resolved to make them long for purposes
of unremitted labor.

But he had one great joy and distinguished triumph still in store for
him. From the time when the "gag" rule had been first established, Mr.
Adams had kept up an unbroken series of attacks upon it at all times
and by all means. At the beginning o