For the "incongruous portrait gallery" that constituted the Cabinet inherited by Adams from Washington, we may refer to the vivid picture of Mr. Bowers: "Ali Baba among his Forty Thieves is no more deserving of sympathy than John Adams shut up within the seclusion of his Cabinet room with his official family of secret enemies" may seem to some a rather severe characterization. The least that can be said, however, is that it was a Cabinet hand-picked by Hamilton and that neither Pickering, Wolcott nor McHenry were the best minds Adams could have chosen in his party. But there again the term party is inaccurate; if Adams had, in some respect, Federalist tendencies, he was not a party man or a party leader. The irritable, impulsive, patriotic, peevish old New Englander was too individualistic to belong to any party; he was not the man either to rally the hesitating, to uphold the vacillating, or to encourage and educate the blind. Curiously enough, he has found very few defenders. Severely treated by the friends of Jefferson, he has not been spared by the admirers of Hamilton. He stands alone, one of the most complicated and contradictory figures in American history--a pure patriot, whose patriotic work is almost forgotten, a catholic spirit who loved to play with ideas and paradoxes, a contrary mind, but in my opinion more widely read than any of his American contemporaries, not excepting Jefferson. A man who spent his life by the side of the severe and haughty "New England Juno", but who had more ideas in his brain than any sultan of the Arabian Nights had favorites in his harem. He had taken the helm at the climax of external difficulties. Complicated and delicate as were the problems of domestic administration, they were overshadowed by the difficulties with France. The misunderstandings, the incidents repeated on both sides, had accumulated with such an effect that, at the beginning of 1797, war with France seemed to be almost unavoidable. Though Jefferson had very little to do with it, it is not out of place to recall the main facts. Genet had unfortunately his American parallel in Gouverneur Morris. As witty and devoid of ordinary morals and honesty as Talleyrand himself, elegant, refined, and corrupt, Gouverneur Morris had been, since his arrival in Paris, the toast of French aristocrats. His activities in favor of the king and his partisans were not unknown to the French, and when Genet was sent to America he had been requested to present discreetly the situation to the American Government. Genet had made no official representation, but he discussed Morris' attitude in a private conversation with Jefferson, and Washington, apprised of the facts, had seen the necessity of acting.