arose. Otis, calm and sound in mind, stood leaning on his cane in the front door of the house where he resided. A single flash glared on the family assembled near, and Mr. Otis fell instantaneously dead in the arms of Mr. Osgood, who sprang forward as he saw him sink. The body was brought to Boston, and his funeral was attended by one of the most numerous processions ever seen in New England. Peace had just been concluded. The great battle of the Revolution had been fought and won, when the great mind which had incurred the most fearful affliction in the early strife, permitted at length to gaze in placid joy on the glorious result, was then by a bright bolt snatched to Heaven without a pang. A cotemporary poet wrote a commemorative ode which closed as follows: "Yes! when the glorious work which he begun, CHAPTER III. SAMUEL ADAMS, LAST OF THE PURITANS. ONE of the brightest and most prominent traits in the early history of our country, is presented in the exalted moral worth of many of the leading patriots. It is a feature delightful to contemplate, and one that accounts for whatever is worthy and stable in our free institutions. If our principal men are not men of principle, it is vain to look for enduring excellence in the works they execute. Burke sagaciously remarked, "I never knew a man who was bad, fit for service that was good. There is always some disqualifying ingredient, mixing and spoiling the compound. The man seems paralytic on that side, his muscles there have lost their very tone and character-they cannot move. In short, the accomplishment of any thing good is a physical impossibility for such a man. There is decrepitude as well as distortion-he could not, if he would, is not more certain than he would not, if he could." The late George Canning, himself a happy example of the association of private morality and political eminence, in an early literary work, enforced the necessity of personal purity, as illustrative of public character, with a vigor of thought and elegance of diction peculiar to himself. He first quotes the following remark from an illustrious master of ancient eloquence: "It is impossible that the unnatural father, the hater of his own blood, should be an able and faithful leader of his country; that the mind which is insensible to the intimate and touching influence of domestic affection, should be alive to the remoter influence of patriotic feeling; that private depravity should consist with public virtue." "The sentiment is here expressed," says Canning, "with all the vehemence of a political chief, conscious of the amiableness of his own domestic life, and inveighing against a rival too strong in most points to be spared when he was found weak. It has, however, a foundation of truth, and may suggest the advantages resulting from the blended species of biography of which we have spoken. Even in the anomalous cases where no correspondence, or no close correspondence, can be traced between the more retired and the more conspicuous features of a character, a comparative exhibition of the two has its use, and will furnish the philosopher with many interesting themes of reflection. The chief use, however, of such an exhibition resides in the rule and not in the exceptions, and belongs not to the speculative few, but to the active many. By associating, in the view of mankind, whatever is amiable, and, as it were, feminine in the human character, with whatever in it is commanding and Herculean, it takes advantage of our veneration för the latter to betray us into a respect for the former. It gives dignity to the humbler virtues and domestic chari 12813 ties in the eyes both of public and private men, both ot those who aspire to become great, and of those who are content to remain little; and thus secures the vital inte rests of society." A happy instance and illustration of the above doctrine is before the world in the life and character of Samuel Adams. He was born in Boston, on the 27th of September, 1722. The family from which he descended was one that early emigrated to New England, and commenced the settlement of the Colony. His father was a man of considerable wealth, of irreproachable character, a magistrate of Boston, and a member of the House of Assembly for many years, under the Colonial government. Having resolved to give his son a liberal education, Samuel Adams was placed under the instruction of Mr. Lovell, a celebrated teacher of the grammar school in Boston. Under his supervision young Adams was fitted for admission to Harvard University, at an early age. He graduated with honor in 1740, when only eighteen years old, and took his Master's degree at twenty. When Samuel Adams graduated, John Adams was five years old, and Josiah Quincy and Joseph Warren yet unborn. James Otis was three years after Samuel Adams, in the list of graduates, and Quincy twenty-three years after him. John Adams completed his college course in 1755, which was fifteen years after the graduation of Samuel. Samuel Adams was distinguished at the university for a serious and secluded cast of mind. He at first designed to devote himself to the Gospelch, ministry, but read 5 Library, •Elspecially STREET, CIRCULATING DEPARTMENT history. The severe writers of Greek and Roman annals were his favorite authors; but Divinity was the profession he resolved to live and die by. The year that Samuel Adams entered Harvard, was the same in which the Earl of Chatham entered Parliament, so that he must have seen the whole of that great statesman's splendid career. But the greatness he saw from afar and emulated, neither crippled the expansion of his own free faculties nor created fear in his breast. He was early distinguished for great assiduity in study, and promptness in the performance of collegiate duties. He was equally remarkable for the uprightness of his demeanor and the frugality of his habits. From the stipend allowed him by his father, he saved a sum sufficient to publish an original pamphlet, entitled "Englishmen's Rights." When he took his second degree, the thesis he discussed was, "Whether it be lawful to resist the SUPREME MAGISTRATE, if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?" This he affirmed and maintained with great force, in the presence of the king's Governor and his Council, in the reign of George the Second, while Sir Robert Walpole was Prime Minister, and these Colonies were not only at peace but exceedingly loyal to England. But in that young bosom lay the elements of glorious rebellion, and in the question he discussed in 1740, lay the whole history of the war of Independence, which dates from 1776. Samuel Adams must be regarded as the great leader of our Revolution. As such he was regarded beyond the Atlantic, where his real character seems to have been better understood than at home. Mr. Adolphus |