What voyages those must have been, when nearly three months was consumed in getting from one country to another; when weary weeks of summer merged into winter before the barrier between the old and the new world could be passed. Yet how often had members of that family braved dangers unknown to perform some duty in the other world. Far back into the past, their Puritan ancestors had found a refuge on “wild New England’s shore,” and in that interval, the waters of the sea had wafted the children of the third and fourth generations over its crested waves, to ask for the heritage their forefathers claimed—liberty of conscience, and freedom to worship God. Years before, a brave, strong woman had, with streaming eyes, seen the form of her eldest boy start over the same track he was now treading, and she had gone back to her lonely home to suffer. Now, through its well-known and treacherous path, that son, grown to man’s estate, with children of his own left behind, wends his tedious way, to bear to the halls of remotest nations the wishes and intentions of his young country. His wife, preferring an uncertain exile in a foreign country to a separation from her husband, suffered extremest anguish as she thought of her weeping children, for the first time separated from her. She felt the great distance and doubtful prospects of hearing from them, not less keenly than she did the length of time which might elapse before she again would tread the shores of her native land. And the bleak climate to which she was hastening in nowise tended to make her cheerful; nor did the fact that Mr. Adams was the first Minister, allay her anxious sadness. Never, perhaps, in the history of the world, were such scenes being enacted as now. Europe was literally a battle-field, and Napoleon, the scourge of the continent, was ruling, by the mighty force of his great skill, the destinies of the Old World. Shut up in St. Petersburg, Mrs. Adams gathered rumors of the progress of that “man of destiny,” and listened for his knock even at the gates of the imperial capital. During the six years of her stay in Russia, what wondrous things transpired! What intense interest marked the era, we, of comparative quiet, can scarcely conceive. Death took from her an infant, born whilst there, and the twofold affliction of public and private trouble weighed upon her.