The farm-house stands at the foot of an eminence called Penn's Hill, about a mile south of Quincy village. It is an old-fashioned dwelling, having a two-story front, and sloping far away to a single one in the rear. This style is peculiar to the early descendants of the Puritan fathers of America. Specimens are becoming rarer every year; and being invariably built of wood, must soon pass away, but not without "the tribute of a sigh" from those, who associate with them memories of the wide old fireplaces, huge glowing backlogs, and hospitable cheer. With this modest material environment of the child, was coupled an intellectual and moral, which was golden. His father, the illustrious John Adams, was bred, and in his youth labored, on the farm. At the birth of his son, he was still a young man, being just turned of thirty, but ripe both in general and professional knowledge, and already recognized as one of the ablest counsellors and most powerful pleaders at the bar of the province. The mother of John Quincy Adams was worthy to be the companion and counsellor of the statesman just described. By reason of slender health she never attended a school. As to the general education allowed to girls at that day, she tells us that it was limited "in the best families to writing, arithmetic, and, in rare instances, music and dancing;" and that "it was fashionable to ridicule female learning." From her father, a clergyman, from her mother, a daughter of John Quincy, and above all from her grandmother, his wife, she derived liberal lessons and salutary examples. Thus her education was entirely domestic and social. Perhaps it was the better for the absence of that absorbing passion of the schools, which for the most part rests as well satisfied with negative elevation by the failure of another, as with positive elevation by the improvement of one's self. The excellent and pleasant volume of her letters, which has gone through several editions, indicates much historical, scriptural, and especially poetical and ethical culture. In propriety, ease, vivacity and grace, they compare not unfavorably with the best epistolary collections; and in constant good sense, and occasional depth and eloquence, no letter-writer can be named as her superior. To her only daughter, mother of the late Mrs. De Wint, she wrote concerning the influence of her grandmother as follows: