of the great and the good, rose the two stars of first magnitude to which our attention is now to be confined.

Adams and Jefferson were born, the first in Massachusetts, on the 19th of October, 1735; the last in Virginia, on the 2d of April, 1743. On the earliest opening of their characters, it was manifest that they were marked for distinction. They both displayed that thirst for knowledge, that restless spirit of inquiry, that fervid sensibility, and that bold, fearless independence of thought, which are among the surest prognostics of exalted talent; and, fortunately for them, as well as for their country and mankind, the Universities in their respective neighborhoods opened to their use, all the fountains of ancient and modern learning. With what appetite they drank at these fountains, we need no testimony of witnesses to inform us. The living streams which afterwards flowed from their own lips and pens, are the best witnesses that can be called, of their youthful studies. They were, indeed, of that gifted order of minds, to which early instruction is of little other use than to inform them of their own powers, and to indicate the objects of human knowledge. Education was not with them, as with minor characters, an attempt to plant new talents and new qualities in a strange and reluctant soil. It was the development, merely, of those which already existed. Thus, the pure and disinterested patriotism of Aristides, the firmness of Cato, and the devotion of Curtius, only awakened the principles that were sleeping in their young hearts, and touched the responding chords with which Heaven had attuned them. The

statesman-like vigor of Pericles, and the spirit-stirring energy of Demosthenes, only roused their own lion powers, and informed them of their strength. Aristotle, and Bacon, and Sidney, and Locke, could do little more than to disclose to them their native capacity for the profound investigation and ascertainment of truth; and Newton taught their power to range among the stars. In short, every model to which they looked, and every great master to whom they appealed, only moved into life the scarcely dormant energies with which Heaven had endued them; and they came forth from the discipline, not decorated for pomp, but armed for battle.

From this first coincidence in the character of their minds and studies, let us proceed to another. They both turned their attention to the same profession, the profession of the law; and they both took up the study of this profession on the same enlarged scale which was so conspicuous in all their other intellectual operations. They had been taught by Hooker to look with reverence upon the science of the law: for, he had told them that "her seat was the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world." Pursued in the spirit, on the extended plan, and with the noble aim, with which they pursued it, may it not be said, without the hazard of illiberal construction, that there was no profession in this country to which Heaven could have directed their choice, so well fitted to prepare them for the eventful struggle which was coming on.

Mr. Adams, we are told, commenced his legal studies, and passed through the initiatory course, under William

Putnam, of Worcester: but, the crown of preparation was placed on his head by Jeremiah Gridley.* Gridley was a man of first rate learning and vigor, and as good a judge of character as he was of law. He had been the legal preceptor, also, some years before, of the celebrated James Otis; and, proud of his two pupils, he was wont to say of them at the bar, with playful affection, that he had raised two young eagles who were one day or other to peck out his eyes." The two young eagles were never known to treat their professional father with irreverence; but how well they fulfilled his prediction of their future eminence, has been already well told by the elegant biographer of one, and remains to furnish a rich theme for that of the other.

It was in the commencement of his legal studies, and when he was yet but a boy, that Mr. Adams wrote that letter from Worcester which has been recently given to the world. Considering the age of the writer, and the point of time at which it was written, that letter may be pronounced, without hyperbole, a mental phenomenon, and far better entitled to the character of a prophecy, than the celebrated passage from the Medea of Seneca, which Bacon has quoted as a prophecy of the discovery of America.

Before I call your attention more particularly to this letter, it is proper to remark, that Mr. Adams lived at a time, and among men, well fitted to evoke his youthful powers. Massachusetts had been, from its earliest set

* Mr. Samuel L. Knapp's Address on the Death of Adams and Jefferson. Mr. Knapp's Life of Gridley.

tlement, a theatre of almost constant political contention. The spirit of liberty which had prompted the pilgrims to bid adieu to the land and tombs of their fathers, and to brave the horrors of an exile to the wilds of America, accompanied them to the forests which they came to subdue; and questions of political right and power, between the parent country and the colony, were continually arising, to call that spirit into action, and to keep it bright and strong. These were a peculiar People, a stern and hardy race, the children of the storm; inured from the cradle to the most frightful hardships which they came to regard as their daily pastime, their minds, as well as their bodies, gathered new strength from the fearful elements that were warring around them, and whatever they dared to meditate as right, that they dared and never failed to accomplish. The robust character of the fathers descended upon their children, and with it, also, came the same invigorating contests. Violations of their charters, unconstitutional restraints upon their trade, and perpetual collisions with the royal Governors sent over to bend or to break them, had converted that province into an arena, in which the strength of mind had been tried against mind, for a century, before the tug of the Revolution came. And these were no puerile sports. They were the stern struggle of intellectual force, for power on the one hand, and liberty on the other. And from that discipline there came forth such men as such a struggle only seems capable of generating; rough, and strong, and bold, and daring; meeting their adver

saries, foot to foot, on the field of argument, and beating them off that field by the superior vigor of their blows.

Præcipitemque Daren, ardens agit æquore toto:

Nunc dextra ingeminans ictus, nunc ille sinistra,

Nec mora, nec requies.

From this school issued those men so well formed for the sturdy business of life, and who shine so brightly in the annals of Massachusetts-Mayhew, and Hawley, and Thacher, and Otis, and Hancock, and a host of others, of the same strong stamp of character: men as stout of heart as of mind, and breathing around them an atmosphere of patriotic energy, which it was impossible to inhale without partaking of their spirit.

Such was the atmosphere which it was the fortune of John Adams to breathe, even from his infancy. Such were the high examples before him. From this proud eyry it was, that this young eagle first opened his eyes upon the sun and the ocean, and learned to plume his own wings for the daring flight.

His letter from Worcester bears date on the 12th of October, 1755. He was consequently then only in his twentieth year. At that time, remember, that no thought of a separation from the parent country had ever touched these shores. The conversations to which he alludes, were upon the topics of the day, and went no farther than to a discussion of the rights of the colony, considered as a colony of the British empire. These were the hints which set his young mind in motion, and this is the letter which they produced: