A portion, embracing perhaps two thirds of the whole, was collected and published in pam-phlets, which, bound together, made an octavo volume, entitled "Correspondence of the late President Adams, originally published in the Boston ' Patriot' in a series of letters." Thus disjointed, and written, as parts of it evince, and as his published correspondence of this period more clearly shows, under great exasperation of feeling, and coming forth, too, at a period when the events of the day engrossed all thoughts, and during which the history of the revolution was less generally known and ! less a subject of public interest than at any ! time before or since, these letters foiled to attract the public attention or to satisfy Mr. Ad-ams's ideal of an historical vindication of himself. Seeing how, amid the ignorance and carelessness of the times, the true history of the revolution was in danger of total oblivion or of being transformed into a sort of legend, he abandoned his task with expressions to his private correspondents of contempt for history, and of utter despair of ever having justice done to him.

But with the establishment of peace in Europe, and the apparent fulfilment, at least for the moment, of all Mr. Adams's prophecies as to the result of the French revolution, the bitter political obloquy of which he had been the mark - an obloquy directed against him i from two opposite quarters at once - began sensibly to relax; and as those who had been contemporaries with his active life one after another dropped off, he himself began to fill, while yet alive, the position in general estima-tion of a hero of the past. After Mr. Jefferson's withdrawal from political life, through the agency of Dr. Rush, who had all along re-mained the personal friend of both, correspondence by letter was renewed between Adams and Jefferson and kept up for the remainder of their lives. About the same time also Adams opened a correspondence with McKean, his friend and cooperator in revolutionary times, but separated from him in the whirlpool of subsequent politics; and he thus drew out from McKean some valuable historical reminiscences. Mr. Adams indeed gave great attention to the subject of American history.

His letters to Mr. Tudor (which led to the publication by that gentleman of the " Life of James Otis ") shed great light upon the early history of the revolution in Massachusetts. They contributed not a little to give the first impulse to that study of American history, revolutionary and colonial, which, commencing about that time, has rescued those subjects from the hands of rhetoricians and fabulists, and has produced so many valuable and authentic historical works. In his correspondence, which appears to have gradually increased and extended itself, Mr. Adams loved to recall and to reexplain his theoretical ideas of government, on some points of which he pushed Jefferson rather hard, and which the result of the French revolution so far as then developed seemed to confirm. Another subject in which he continued to feel a great interest was that of theology. He had begun as an Arminian, and the more he had read and thought and the older he grew, the freer views he took. Though clinging with tenacity to the religious institutions of New England, it would seem from his correspondence that he had finally curtailed his theology to the ten commandments and the sermon on the mount. Of his views on this point he gave evidence in his last public act, to which we now approach.

Mrs. Adams had died in 1818, but even that shock, severe as it was, did not unsettle the firm grasp of her husband on life, its enjoyments and its duties. When, in consequence of the erection of the district of Maine into a separate state, a convention was to meet in 1820 to revise the constitution of Massachusetts, in the framing of which Mr. Adams had taken so leading a part, though in his 86th year, he was chosen a delegate by his townsmen. Upon his first appearance, with a form yet erect, though tremulous with age, in this convention, which included almost everybody in the state of distinguished intelligence or reputation, Mr. Adams was received by the members standing, and with every demonstration of affection and regard; and a series of resolutions was forthwith offered and passed, containing an enumeration and warm acknowledgment of some of his principal public services, and calling upon him to preside. But this, while duly acknowledging the compliment, he declined on the score of his age and infirmities. The same cause also prevented his taking any very active part in the proceedings.

Yet he labored to produce a modification of the third article of the bill of rights, on the subject of public worship and its support, an article which, when originally drawing the rest of that instrument, he had passed over to other hands. But the time had not yet come for such changes as he wished. The old puritan feeling was still in too great force to acknowledge the equal rights, political and religious, of others than Christians. Yet, however it might be with his colleagues or his fellow citizens, Mr. Adams in this movement expressed his own ideas. One of his latest letters, written in 1825 and addressed to Jefferson, is a remarkable protest against the blasphemy laws, so called, of Massachusetts and the rest of the Union, as being utterly inconsistent with the rights of free inquiry and private judgment. - It is in the letters of Mr. Adams, of which but a small part have yet been published, that his genius as a writer and thinker, and no less distinctly his character as a man, most clearly appear. Down even to the last year of his protracted life, his letters exhibit a wonderful degree of vitality, energy, acuteness, wit, playfulness, and command of language.

As a writer of English, little as he ever troubled himself with revision and correction, and we may add as a speculative philosopher, he must be placed first among Americans of all the several generations to which he belonged, except only Franklin; and if Franklin excelled him in humor and geniality, he far surpassed Franklin in compass, wit, and vivacity. Indeed, it is only by the recent partial publication of his letters that his gifts in this respect are beginning to become known. The first collection of his private letters, published in his lifetime and much against his will, though not deficient in the characteristics above pointed out, yet, having been written under feelings of great aggravation and in a spirit of extreme bitterness toward his political opponents, was rather damaging to him. This publication was one of the incidents of his becoming for a third time, in his extreme age, an object of hostility, confined now, however, to a few of the more tenacious of his old federalist opponents, in consequence of the coalition of all parties in New England to support his son, J. Q. Adams, for the presidency.