d us
more directly, as something we should like to know, what he had done, what
people he had met and known, what events he had shared in or observed, and
what he thought about it all. This he does do of course, in his own
enigmatic way, in the process of explaining where and how he sought
education and failed to find it; and fortunately, in the course of the
leisurely journey, he takes us into many by-paths and shows us, by the easy
play of his illuminating intelligence, much strange country, and many
people whom we have never known, or have never known so intimately. When
this happens, when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes,
and merely describes people or types of mind or social customs, the result
is wholly admirable. There are inimitable passages, and the number is
large, which one cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young men of
the Harvard class of '58, who were "_negative to a degree that in the end
became positive and triumphant_"; or the exquisitely drawn portrait of
"Madame President," all things considered the finest passage in the book;
or the picture of old John Quincy Adams coming slowly down-stairs one hot
summer morning and with massive and silent solemnity leading the rebellious
little Henry to school against his will; or yet the reflections of the
little Henry himself (or was it the reflection of an older Henry?), who
recognized on this occasion "that the President, though a tool of tyranny,
had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. He had shown no
temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of
force. Above all, he had held his tongue."...

The number of passages one would wish to quote is legion; but one must be
content to say that the book is fascinating throughout--particularly
perhaps in those parts which are not concerned with the education of Henry
Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem is touched upon, there are
often qualifications to be made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and
incapacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we have to do for the
most part, not with the way things struck Adams at the time, but with the
way it seemed to him, as an old man looking back upon the "broken arch,"
they should have struck him. Besides, in the later chapters, in which he
deals with the dynamic theory of history, the problem was so vague, even to
himself, that we too often do not know what he wishes to convey. Apropos of