r purity, more obvious than it is now, when they have become
beacons to mankind in what seems to be a general dissolution of their
ancient social systems.

The history of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS is one that opens no new truth in the
philosophy of virtue; for there is no undiscovered truth in that
philosophy. But it is a history that sheds marvellous confirmation on
maxims which all mankind know, and yet are prone to undervalue and forget.
The exalted character before us was formed by the combination of virtue,
courage, assiduity, and modesty, under favorable conditions, with native
talent and genius, and illustrates the truth, that in morals as in nature,
simplicity is the chief element of the sublime.

John Quincy Adams was fortunate in his lineage; in the period, and in the
place of his nativity; in all the circumstances of education; in the age
and country in which he lived; in the incidents, as well as the occasions
of his public service; and in the period and manner of his death. He was a
descendant from one of the Puritan planters of Massachusetts, and a son of
the most intrepid actor in the Revolution of Independence. Quincy, the
place of his birth, is a plain, bounded on the west by towering granite
hills, and swept without defence by every wind from the ocean. Its soil
in ancient times was as sterile as its climate is always rigorous.

Born on the eleventh day of July, 1767, in the hour of the agitation of
rebellion, and reared within sight and sound of gathering war, the
earliest political ideas he received were such as John Adams then
uttered--"We must fight." "Sink or swim--live or die--survive or perish
with my country, is my unalterable determination." A mother fervently
pious, and eminent in intellectual gifts, directed with more than maternal
assiduity and solicitude the education of him who was to render her own
name immortal. Never quite divorced from home, yet twice, and for long
periods in his youth, a visitor in Europe, he enjoyed always the parental
discipline of one of the founders of the American State, and often the
daily conversation of Franklin and Jefferson; and combined travel in
France, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, and even
diplomatic experience, with the instructions of the schools of Paris, of
the University at Leyden, and of Harvard University at Cambridge; and all
these influences fell upon him at a period when his country, then opening
the way to human liberty throu