vestigation. For our purposes it is important also to note that he had a marked taste for literature, as the vast memoirs bear witness. In his old age he spoke of the "ecstasy of delight" with which he had heard a choir singing his version of the 65th Psalm as surpassing all the pleasure he had received in the whole course of his life from the praise of mortal men. His literary and his political aspirations were intimately associated. He had hoped that his diary would rank next to the Holy Scriptures as the record of one who "by the irresistible power of genius and the irrepressible energy of will and the favor of Almighty God" had "banished war and slavery from the face of the earth forever."
Charles Francis Adams I, perhaps not the most ambitious of John Quincy's children, was the only one that survived him; he must therefore be our representative of the third generation. We may, however, pass lightly over him, because, though an eminent, sturdy, and capable man, he repeats in general the formative processes and the careers of his predecessors without any singular distinction or deviation from type. His richness of educational opportunity may be summarized by saying that he learned French at St. Petersburg, where his father was minister, spent several years at a school in England, passed through the Boston Latin School and
