CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 521 



ever accessory notions he gained, his primary object was to worship, 

 and not to gaze. 



In the field of politics, and still more in that of diplomacy, to which 

 a sense of duty, and not inclination, brought him, the work of Mr. 

 Adams, the part that he played in the world, is gratefully remembered. 

 But it is a kind of work that we all are in great danger of undervalu- 

 ing, because it is not experimental, not discovery, — not what we are 

 uiged to do again and again, original work. I confess I am getting a 

 little impatient of this phrase, " the need of original work," which 

 seems to sneer at everything that cannot be called new, which is never 

 at rest till it has struck out something to send to a scientific or histori- 

 cal magazine, even while still in a crude state, in order to avoid every 

 possible chance of anticipation, Mr. Adams made no discoveries in 

 politics. He probably would not have been the author of any great 

 original treatise if he had remained faithful to literature. He did not 

 in his study compose what in the semi-Teutonic jargon of the day is 

 called an epoch-making book, like the Wealth of Nations ; he did not 

 in Congress devise a plan which instantly saved North and South from 

 the civil war. He did, it is true, as a publicist, play an active part 

 in opening what was announced to be the new era of arbitration in- 

 stead of war ; but however satisfactory the results of the Geneva tribu- 

 nal are to us, its precedent has not been followed with eagerness, nor 

 have all nations laid down their arms at the feet of similar arbitrators. 

 But Mr. Adams was called upon to do a work quite as important and 

 not less elevated than the discovery of new moral or political truth, — 

 the assertion, namely, and the maintenance, of old rights and old truths, 

 which were in danger of being forgotten or trampled through national 

 frivolity, or triviality, or brutality. He maintained, at the risk of his 

 political prospects and private friendship, that the wealthy men of the 

 North were sacrificing the liberty of their ancestors to the gains of 

 the hour ; he maintained, at the risk of his party connections, that 

 North and South must seek to unite on a reasonable common ground, 

 that would maintain the union and liberty of our fathers amid the pas- 

 sions of the hour ; he maintained at the utter sacrifice of his comfort, 

 nay, of his very life, that there are eternal obligations between nations, 

 as old as peace and war themselves, which must not and shall not be 

 forgotten and slighted under any pretence of peculiar circumstances 

 aud difficulties. That Mr. Adams should have called Americans and 

 English back to these old principles, that he should have refused to 

 let any new discoveries interfere with eternal right and wrong, seems 

 to me on a level with Galileo's reasserting the Copernican system 

 after Tycho Brahe had attempted to reverse it. 



