On the 3d of February Mr. Adams took the floor, and spoke for two hours in his own defence, with an eloquence and effect to which no description can do justice. He touched the low underplot of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with pointed severity and bitter truth, and then gave amusing particulars of missives he had received from the South threatening him with assassination. Among other kindly hints sent through the post-office was a colored lithograph portrait of himself, with the picturesque annotation of a rifle-ball on the forehead, and a promise that such a remedy "would stop his music." He alluded to these communications with perfect good nature, some of them being identical with words used towards him by Mr. Gilmer. A further account of them will be given from the correspondent of the newspapers of the day.[1] [1] See the _Boston Courier_ and _New York American_ of the period. "Among the many strange impressions of these singular scenes, nothing is more striking than the total, disgraceful ignorance which prevails as to who John Quincy Adams _is_. That he has been President of the United States, and had previously borne high offices, seems occasionally to be vaguely remembered by a few of the most intelligent of his persecutors. But of the part which he has borne for half a century in the history of America and of the world they know no more than they do of the Vedas and Puranas. "The thread of this great discourse was his present and past relations to Virginia and Virginians. After gratefully acknowledging his infinite obligations to the great Virginians of the first age of the federal republic, he modestly and unpretendingly recounted the unsought exalted honors heaped upon him by Washington, Madison, and Monroe, and detailed with touching simplicity and force some of his leading actions in the discharge of those weighty trusts. As he went back through the historic vista of patriotic achievements, he seemed to renew his youth like the eagles, and rose into a still loftier and bolder strain than in the withering retort with which he struck down Wise and Marshall. In passing over the preliminaries of his discourse, he chanced to fix his eye on the latter, who was moving down one of the side aisles. Instantly, at the suggestion of the moment, he burst forth into a beautiful appeal to the hallowed memory of the venerated and immaculate Virginian who once bore the name of Marshall through a long career of judicial honor and usefulness. The general interest in this appeal to the past was impressive. The members of the house drew together around him; even his persecutors paid an involuntary tribute to 'the old man eloquent.'