A GREAT PUBLIC CHARACTER. 99 



from recording whatsoever thing thou hast gathered 

 therefrom," — so ready is Oblivion with her fatal shears. 

 The somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-boue- 

 picker, like Athenaeus, is turned to gold by time. Even 

 the Virgilvum vidi tantum of Dryden 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 

 Franklin County, in the western part of the State. A 

 little stiff in his person, not a little formal in his man- 

 ners, not particularly at ease in the presence of strangers. 

 He had the air of a country-gentleman not accustomed 

 to mix much in society, perfectly polite, but not easy in 

 his address and conversation, 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 un- 

 official costume of studied slovenliness, intended as a snub 

 to haughty 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 dis- 

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

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



