76 A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 



about Milton, and of Pope again about Dryden, is worth 

 having, and gives a pleasant fillip to the fancy. There is 

 much of this quality in Mr. Edmund Quincy s book, enough 

 to make us wish there were more. We get a glimpse of 

 President Washington, in 1795, who reminded Mr. Quincy 

 of the gentlemen who used to come to Boston in those 

 days to attend the General Court from Hampden or Frank 

 lin County, in the western part of the State. A little stiff 

 in his person, not a little formal in his manners, not particu 

 larly at ease in the presence of strangers. He had the air 

 of a country gentleman not accustomed to mix much in so 

 ciety, perfectly polite, but not easy in his address and con 

 versation, and not graceful in his gait and movements. Our 

 figures of Washington have been so long equestrian, that it 

 is pleasant to meet him dismounted for once. In the same 

 way we get a card of invitation to a dinner of sixty covers at 

 John Hancock s, and see the rather light-weighted great man 

 wheeled round the room (for he had adopted Lord Chatham s 

 convenient trick of the gout) to converse with his guests. In 

 another place we are presented, with Mr. Merry, the English 

 Minister, to Jefferson, whom we find in an unofficial costume 

 of studied slovenliness, intended as a snub to haugh ty Albion. 

 Slippers down at the heel and a dirty shirt become weapons 

 of diplomacy and threaten more serious war. Thus many a 

 door into the past, long irrevocably shut upon us, is set ajar, 

 and we of the younger generation on the landing catch peeps 

 of distinguished men, and bits of their table-talk. We drive 

 in from Mr. Lyman s beautiful seat at Waltham (unique 

 at that day in its stately swans and half shy, half familiar 

 deer) with John Adams, who tells us that Dr. Priestley 

 looked on the French monarchy as the tenth horn of the 

 Beast in Revelation a horn that has set more sober wits 

 dancing than that of Huon of Bordeaux. Those were days, 

 we are inclined to think, of more solid and elegant hospita 

 lity than our own the elegance of manners, at once more 

 courtly and more frugal, of men who had better uses for 

 wealth than merely to display it. Dinners have more 

 courses now, and, like the Gascon in the old story, who 

 could not see the town for the houses, we miss the real 

 dinner in the multiplicity of its details. We might seek 

 long before we found so good cheer, so good company, or so 

 good talk as our fathers had at Lieutenant- Governor Win- 

 throp s or Senator Cabot s. 



