childhood, which time strengthened. Many years afterwards, when
residing in Europe, he wrote: "Penn's Hill and Braintree North Common
Rocks never looked and never felt to me like any other hill or any
other rocks; because every rock and every pebble upon them associates
itself with the first consciousness of my existence. If there is a
Bostonian who ever sailed from his own harbor for distant lands, or
returned to it from them, without feelings, at the sight of the Blue
Hills, which he is unable to express, his heart is differently
constituted from mine."

These local attachments were indissolubly associated with the events
of the American Revolution, and with the patriotic principles
instilled by his mother. Standing with her on the summit of Penn's
Hill, he heard the cannon booming from the battle of Bunker's Hill,
and saw the smoke and flames of burning Charlestown. During the siege
of Boston he often climbed the same eminence alone, to watch the
shells and rockets thrown by the American army.

With a mind prematurely developed and cultivated by the influence of
the characters of his parents and the stirring events of that period,
he embarked, at the age of eleven years, in February, 1778, from the
shore of his native town, with his father, in a small boat, which
conveyed them to a ship in Nantasket Roads, bound for Europe. John
Adams had been associated in a commission with Benjamin Franklin and
Arthur Lee, as plenipotentiary to the Court of France. After residing
in Paris until June, 1779, he returned to America, accompanied by his
son. Being immediately appointed, by Congress, minister plenipotentiary
to negotiate a treaty of peace and commerce with Great Britain, they
both returned together to France in November, taking passage in a
French frigate. On this his second voyage to Europe, young Adams began
a diary, which, with few intermissions, he continued through life.
While in Paris he resumed the study of the ancient and modern
languages, which had been interrupted by his return to America.

In July, 1780, John Adams having been appointed ambassador to the
Netherlands, his son was removed from the schools of Paris to those of
Amsterdam, and subsequently to the University of Leyden. There he
pursued his studies until July, 1781, when, in his fourteenth year, he
was selected by Francis Dana, minister plenipotentiary from the United
States to the Russian court, as his private secretary, and accompanied
him throu