In 1801, Mr. Adams received from his government permission to return home. After taking leave with the customary formalities, he left Berlin, sailed from Hamburg, and on the 4th of September, 1801, arrived in the United States. During his residence in Berlin his time was devoted to official labor and intellectual improvement; yet his letters show that he was seldom, if ever, self-satisfied, being filled with aspirations after something higher and better than he could accomplish. His translations, at this period, embraced many satires of Juvenal, and Wieland's Oberon from the original, into English verse; the last he intended for the press, had it not been superseded by the version of Sotheby. He also translated from the German a treatise, by Gentz, on the origin and principles of the American Revolution, which he finished and transmitted to the United States for publication, eulogizing it "as one of the clearest accounts that exist of the rise and progress of the American Revolution, in so small a compass; rescuing it from the disgraceful imputation of its having proceeded from the same principles, and of its being conducted in the same spirit, as that of France. This error has nowhere been more frequently repeated, nowhere been of more pernicious tendency, than in America itself." The last years of Mr. Adams' residence at the Court of Berlin were painfully affected by the bitter party animadversions which assailed his father's administration, and which did not fail to bring within the sphere of their asperities the missions he had himself held in Europe. These feelings became intense on the publication of Alexander Hamilton's letter "On the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, President of the United States." This letter, with the divisions in the cabinet at Washington, occasioned by the political friends of Hamilton, excited in the breast of Mr. Adams a spirit, which, from affection for his father, and a sense of the injustice done to him, could not be otherwise than indignant. Though concealed, it was not the less understood. He regarded Mr. Hamilton's letter as the efficient cause of his father's loss of power, and attributed its influence to its being circulated at the eve of the presidential election, and to its adaptation to awaken prejudices and excite party jealousies; although it contained nothing that could justly shake confidence in a statesman of long-tried experience and fidelity. He pronounced that letter as not only a full vindication, but the best eulogium on his father's administration. CHAPTER II. RESIDENCE IN BOSTON.--RETURNS TO THE BAR.--ELECTED TO THE SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS.--TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.--HIS COURSE RELATIVE TO THE ATTACK OF THE LEOPARD ON THE CHESAPEAKE.--RESIGNS HIS SEAT AS SENATOR OF THE UNITED STATES.--APPOINTED MINISTER TO RUSSIA.--FINAL SEPARATION FROM THE FEDERAL PARTY.