van of the profession, as well as that of the patriots, was called upon to undertake his defence. How was he to act? It is easy to know how a little, time-serving politician, or even a man of ordinary firmness, would have acted the one would have thrown himself on the popular current, and the other would have been swept along by it, and joined in the public cry for the victim. But Adams belonged to a higher order of character. He was formed not only to impel and guide the torrent; but to head that torrent too, when it had taken a wrong direction, and to roll it back upon its source." He was determined that the world should distinguish between a petty commotion of angry spirits, and the noble stand made by an enlightened nation in a just and noble cause. He was resolved that that pure and elevated cause should not be soiled and debased by an act of individual injustice. He undertook the defence, supported by his younger, but distinguished associate, Josiah Quincy; and, far from flattering the angry passions around him, he called upon the jury, in their presence, to be deaf, "deaf as adders, to the clamors of the populace ;" and they were so. To their honor, a jury drawn from the excited people of Boston, acquitted the prisoner: and to their equal honor, that very populace, instead of resenting the language and conduct of his advocate, loaded him immediately with additional proofs of their confidence. These were the people, who, according to some European notions, are incapable of any agency in their own government. By their systems, deliberately planned for the purpose, they first degrade and

brutalize their people, and then descant on their unfitness for self rule. The man of America, it seems, is the only man fit for republican government! But man is every where the same, and requires only to be enlightened, to assert the native dignity of his character.

Mr. Adams was now among the most conspicuous champions of the colonial cause in Massachusetts. In the same year to which we have just adverted, 1770, he had been elected a member of the Provincial Legislature and he thenceforth took a high and commanding part in every public measure; displaying, on every occasion, the same consistent character; the same sagacity to pierce the night of the future; the same bold and dauntless front; the same nerve of the Nemean lion.

The time had now come for concerted action among the Colonies and, accordingly, on the 5th September, 1774, the first Continental Congress met at Philadelphia. With what emotions Mr. Adams witnessed this great movement of the nation, it is easy for those who know his ardent character to imagine. Nor, are we left to our imaginations alone. He had been elected a member of that body: and immediately on his election, an incident occurred which relieves us from the necessity of conjecturing the state of his feelings. His friend Sewall, the Attorney General, hearing of his election, sent for him, and he came: when Sewall, with all the solicitude and importunity of friendship, sought to divert him from his purpose of taking his seat in Congress he represented to him that Great Britain was

determined on her purpose: that her power was irre sistible, and would be destructive to him and all who should persevere in opposition to her designs. "I "know," replied the dauntless and high-souled patriot, "that Great Britain has determined on her system; " and that very determination, determines me on mine. "You know that I have been constant and uniform

The die is now cast. Sink or swim, live or

"in opposition to her designs. "I have passed the Rubicon. "die, survive or perish with my country, is my unal"terable determination." He accordingly took his seat and with what activity and effect he discharged its duties, the journals of the day sufficiently attest.

Of that august and venerable body, the old Continental Congress, what can be said that would not fall below the occasion? What that would not sound like a puerile and tumid effort, to exaggerate the praise of a body which was above all praise? Let me turn from any attempt at description to your own hearts, where that body lies entombed with all you hold most sacred. To that Congress, let future statesmen look, and learn what it is to be a patriot. There was no self. No petty intrigue for power. No despicable faction for individual honors. None of those feuds, the fruit of an unhallowed ambition, which converted the Revolution of France into a mere contest for the command of the guillotine; and which have, now, nearly disarmed unhappy Greece, in the sacred war she is waging for the tombs of her illustrious dead. No: of our Great Fathers we may say with truth, what was said of the Romans

in their golden age; with them the Republic was "all in all; for that alone they consulted: the only "faction they formed was against the common enemy: "their minds, their bodies were exerted, sincerely, and "greatly and nobly exerted, not for personal power, "but for the liberties, the honor, the glory of their "country." May the time never come, when an allusion to their virtues can give any other feelings than those of pleasure and pride to their descendants.

Having, in this imperfect manner, fellow citizens, touched rather than traced the incidents by which Mr. Adams was prepared and conducted into the scenes of the Revolution, let us turn to the great luminary of the South.

Virginia, as you know, had been settled by other causes than those which had peopled Massachusetts; and the Colonists themselves were of a different character. The first attempts at settlement in that quarter of the world had been conducted, as you remember, under the auspices of the gallant Raleigh, that "man of wit and man of the sword," as Sir Edward Coke tauntingly called him, and certainly one of the brightest flowers in the Courts of Elizabeth and James. He did not live to make a permanent establishment in Virginia; but, his genius seems, nevertheless, to have presided over the State, and to have stamped his own character on her distinguished sons. Virginia had experienced none of those early and long continued conflicts which had contributed to form the robust character of the North; on the contrary, during the century

that Massachusetts had been buffetting with the storm, Virginia, resting on a halcyon sea, had been cultivating the graces of science, and literature, and the genial elegancies of social life. But, her moral and intellectual character was not less firm and vigorous than that of her Northern sister: for the invader came, and Athens as well as Sparta, was found ready to do her duty, and to do it too, bravely, ably, heroically.

At the time of Mr. Jefferson's appearance, the society of Virginia was much diversified, and reflected, pretty distinctly, an image of that of England. There was, first, the landed aristocracy, shadowing forth the order of English nobility: then, the sturdy yeomanry, common to them both; and last, a fæculum of beings, as they were called by Mr. Jefferson, corresponding with the mass of the English plebeians.

Mr. Jefferson, by birth, belonged to the aristocracy: but, the idle and voluptuous life which marked that order had no charms for a mind like his. He relished better the strong, unsophisticated, and racy character of the yeomanry, and attached himself, of choice, to that body. Born to an inheritance, then deemed immense, and with a decided taste for literature and science, it would not have been surprising if he had devoted himself, exclusively, to the luxury of his studies, and left the toils and the hazards of public action to others. But, he was naturally ardent, and fond of action, and of action too, on a great scale; and, so readily did he kindle in the feelings that were playing around him, that he could no more have stood still while his coun