It is not possible to give a more glowing eulogy in the English language of a person, than this written by John Adams, the successor of Washington as second President of the United States, but it could scarcely be less. The regularity of his life, his sympathy for the distressed, his affability, his integrity, his industry, his talents for business, and the administration of affairs, his fluency, and grace, as public speaker. His command of temper, and courteousness under provocation, united to form a rare man, and to give him influence. In a country where literary enterprise was very uncommon, he had devoted a great part of his life to investigating the history of his native province, busy though he was in so many places, in behalf of the public, he found time to carry it forward. In 1764 was published in Boston the first volume of his "History of Massachusetts Bay," a carefully studied work quite unparalleled in the meagre colonial literature, and is still, and will always remain, of the first authority respecting the beginning of New England. In 1767 came the second volume. He had access to original papers such as no person now possesses which were of the highest historical value. Writing to a friend in England in 1765, he said, "I think from my beginning the work until I had completed it, which was about twelve months, I never had time to write two sheets at a sitting without avocations by public business, but forced to steal a little time in the morning and evening while I was in town, and leave it for weeks together so I found it difficult to keep any plan in my mind." In his third volume, written twenty years later and not published till 1828, more than forty years after his death, the heat of the fight is still in the heart beating behind the pen, in painting the portraits of his contemporaries. Otis, Sam Adams, Hancock and others, the men who bore him down after the fiercest possible struggle. His portrait drawing is by no means without candor, and one wonders that the picture is no darker. His presentment is always clear and dignified; his judgment of men and events are just. It is the work of the thoughtful brain whose comments on politics, finance, religion, etc., are full of intelligence and humanity.