ng for
the decision of his government, he travelled, with his family, in Saxony
and Bohemia, and, in the ensuing summer, into Silesia. His observations
during this tour were embodied in letters to his brother, Thomas B.
Adams, and were published, without his authority, in Philadelphia, and
subsequently in England. The work contains interesting sketches of
Silesian life and manners, and important accounts of manufactures,
mines, and localities; concluding with elaborate historical,
geographical, and statistical statements of the province.

The following passages are characteristic, and indicate the general
spirit of the work. "Count Finkenstein resides in this vicinity. He was
formerly president of the judicial tribunal at Custrin, but was
dismissed by Frederic II., on the occasion of the miller Arnold's famous
lawsuit; an instance in which the great king, from mere love of justice,
committed the greatest injustice that ever cast a shade upon his
character. His anxiety, upon that occasion, to prove to the world that
in his courts of justice the beggar should be upon the same footing as
the prince, made him forget that in substantial justice the maxim ought
to bear alike on both sides, and that the prince should obtain his right
as much as the beggar. Count Finkenstein and several other judges of the
court at Custrin, together with the High Chancellor Fuerst, were all
dismissed from their places, for doing their duty, and persisting in it,
contrary to the will of the king, who, substituting his ideas of natural
equity in place of the prescriptions of positive law, treated them with
the utmost severity, for conduct which ought to have received his
fullest approbation."

"Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Watts, has bestowed a just and exalted
encomium upon him for not disdaining to descend from the pride of genius
and the dignity of science to write for the wants and the capacities of
children. 'Every man acquainted,' says he, 'with the common principles
of human action, will look with veneration on the writer who is at one
time combating Locke, and at another making _a catechism_ for children
in their fourth year.' But how much greater still is the tribute of
admiration, irresistibly drawn from us, when we behold an absolute
monarch, the greatest general of his age, eminent as a writer in the
highest departments of literature, descending, in a manner, to teach the
alphabet to the children of his kingdom; bestowing his care, hi