same courage and sagacity that had marked
his conduct in the eighteen-forties. You remember his answer to Guizot's
question: "How long do you think the American Republic will endure?" "So
long," replied Lowell, "as the ideas of its founders continue to be
dominant"; and he added that by "ideas" he meant "the traditions of their
race in government and morals." Yet the conservatism revealed in this reply
was blended with audacity--the inherited audacity of the pioneer. No line
of Lowell's has been more often quoted in this hall than the line about the
futility of attempting to open the "Future's portal with the Past's
blood-rusted key." Those words were written in 1844. And here, in a
sentence written forty-two years afterward, is a description of organized
human society which voices the precise hope of forward-looking minds in
Europe and America at this very hour: "The basis of all society is the
putting of the force of all at the disposal of all, by means of some
arrangement assented to by all, for the protection of all, and this under
certain prescribed forms." Like Jefferson, like Lincoln, like Theodore
Roosevelt at his noblest, Lowell dared to use the word "all."

Such men are not forgotten. As long as June days come and the bobolink's
song "runs down, a brook of laughter, through the air"; as long as a few
scholars are content to sit in the old garret with the old books, and close
the books, at times, to think of old friends; as long as the memory of
brave boys makes the "eyes cloud up for rain"; as long as Americans still
cry in their hearts "O beautiful, my country!" the name of James Russell
Lowell will be remembered as the inheritor and enricher of a great
tradition.

THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS[16]

CARL BECKER

[Footnote 16: _The Education of Henry Adams: an Autobiography._ Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1918. The selection is a part of an admirable critique in the
April, 1919, number of the _American Historical Review_. By permission of
the author and of the editors of the magazine. The article should be read
as a whole for a complete understanding of the critic's analysis.]

In 1771, Thomas Hutchinson wrote to one of his friends, "We have not been
so quiet here these five years ... if it were not for two or three Adamses,
we should do well enough." From that day to this many people have agreed
with the fastidious governor. But so far, an Adams or two we have always
had with us; and on the whole, although