formation of character which is the prime object of all Sundayschool teaching."

Perhaps the best secular instruction is oral: so of Sundayschool teaching the child catches by a fine attraction, from the sparkle in the eye, the intonation of the voice, what falls dead on his listless attention to the printed page. It has been well said, "No teaching worthy of the name or the time spent can be extempore. It must be well prepared." Lest this should deter excellent teachers, but with small opportunity for study, from continuing their labors, let me add that consecration of heart is the best preparation, for then God transmutes our stammering sentences into syllables of light, which echo in our scholars' hearts, when our tongue is mute and our name forgotten. I look with admiration, I cannot look with pity, on the teacher, who denying herself needful rest, or the solace of good preaching, goes to meet her class with self-distrust, unappreciated, perhaps, by parent as well as child, and with but a dim persuasion that she is on the road to win the guerdon-" She hath done what she could."

Now that religious instruction is wisely removed from the weekday to the Sunday school, it may become necessary to have trained and even paid teachers, but never let us make the fatal mistake of placing second that preparation of heart, which is the first requisite. Nor let us forget that for the teacher, as for the child, we want wisdom more than knowledge; for the wise are not as the sands of the sea. Every child should know the Beatitudes and some of the Psalms, not only to sweeten his youth, but to furnish the "green pastures and still waters" of his old age; but an indiscriminate and excessive getting by heart of Scripture seemeth to me unwise, just as a mechanical reading of the parables robbed them for years of interest to me.

In this shifting period, when we hardly know whether we stand, or have anything to stand on, do not disturb the child's trust by the impertinence of dogma. By this I do not mean that the child should not be taught the life-giving doctrines of the Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the supremacy of conscience, but that disputed doctrines should be avoided, for "the last place, as it has been often said, where the so-called religious difficulty ought to appear, is that place where it is most talked of in the

education of little children. Their questions, their answers, are above or below the level on which the discussions of their elders have raged."

When you come to the still more difficult subject of doubt, meet it with serenity, honestly confessing ignorance when you must, respectfully bearing — not attempting to stifle, incredulity, thanking your Heavenly Father for the child, as for yourself, that intellectual doubt is no longer considered a crime; but doing all you can to remove it, as a calamity that may become the habit of the child's mind, and so not easily disproved.

Teach cheerfully, welcoming the child to a feast of joy. Playfulness, that happy gift, is compatible with dignity, and never more seasonable than in the teaching of the light-hearted. Teach the child to think, teach him to work; the Children's Mission has blown a wholesome breath of life into Sunday-school activity. Let us all work, each in his way; our straws are different, our bricks will be unlike; but all that is needful is for every one to lay a brick in the holy temple.

Superintendents, have faith in your teachers, give them a broad margin; and if you have the same lesson for the whole school, let them teach it individually, for so only will they teach to good purpose. When the work is not left to the incompetent or unwilling, we shall not hear the remark made with good-humored complacency or patronizing pity, "So-and-so is a very good sort of man, a Sunday-school teacher;" nor, "That is a harmless book, just fitted for the Sunday-school." As if good intentions were enough, and the child's training for immortality the most inconsiderable matter in the world! No: let us magnify our office, and draw in men and women with an aptitude to teach, men and women of genius, who, with contagious enthusiasm, may devote their richest gifts, their God-given power, to the noblest work permitted man to do, and who, perhaps, having failed to reason themselves into the kingdom of heaven, may sing themselves there, by making existence a Psalm of Life.

E. P. CHANNING.

MEMOIRS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.*

THE public life of John Quincy Adams covered a period of about fifty-four years, from his appointment as Minister to Holland, in June, 1794, to his death, in February, 1848. During nearly all these years he kept a journal, recording with great minuteness of detail what he read, what he thought, and what he did, and leaving on its uncounted pages abundant materials for any future reader to form a just estimate of the writer. The habit was formed even earlier than the date we have indicated; and there exists a diary kept almost continuously for sixty-five years. So early as September, 1778, we find him writing, to his "Honoured Mamma," in the formal language which once characterized the letters of children to their parents," My Pappa enjoins it upon me to keep a journal, or a diary of the Events that happen to me, and of objects that I see, and of Characters that I converse with from day to day." The value of such a record he seems to have well understood, even at this early age; but he confesses that he has not patience and perseverance enough to keep it so regularly as he ought. He further informs her," My Pappa, who takes a great deal of Pains to put me in the right way, has also advised me to Preserve copies of all my letters, & has given me a Convenient Blank Book for this end." And he adds with not a little shrewdness, in amusing contrast with the juvenile spelling, "A journal Book & a letter Book of a Lad of Eleven years old Can not be expected to contain much of Science, Litterature, arts, wisdom or wit, yet it may serve to perpetuate many observations that I may make, & hereafter help me to recolect both persons & things that would other ways escape my memory." Accordingly in November of the following year, when he was a little more than twelve years old, he began to keep a regular journal. At first it was kept in a small paper-covered

* Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising Portions of his Diary from 1794 to 1848. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. Vols. I., II. 8vo. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874.

book; but afterward he used substantial quarto volumes of an average size of more than five hundred pages each.

It would scarcely have been desirable to print the whole of the record thus preserved, even if its extent would not have prevented its finding readers; and Mr. C. F. Adams has therefore wisely confined himself to printing portions only of his father's voluminous manuscript. The selection, so far as we may judge from the two volumes before us, has been made with the care and discrimination which we should have anticipated from the editor's previous labors in this department of literature. Much has been omitted; but the rules which have been followed in regard to these omissions, as explained in the Preface, are such as must commend themselves to every reader. Mr. Adams there tells us that he has omitted the details and events of common life and a considerable part of the moral and religious speculations in which the work abounds, but that he has not suppressed strictures on contemporaries who were public men acting in the same sphere with the writer, nor any part of his father's reflections on his own character and conduct, and that he has retained in all cases the exact words of the original entry, unless there was an obvious slip of the pen. He has added a few explanatory notes, and he has occasionally connected parts of the narrative by a few paragraphs from his own pen, where such an addition seemed to be required.

It must be confessed that the diary is not very lively reading. The writer had little imagination and little sense of the humorous; and there is scarcely a trace of that fondness for personal gossip which is found in many of the diaries of English statesmen. But it throws new and important light on the character of the writer, and will be invaluable to every student of the period of history which it covers. Mr. Adams lived so long and so openly in the eye of the country that the broad features of his public career are known to every intelligent person. It is not probable, therefore, that the revelations of this diary will lead to any essential modification in the common estimate of his life and services. But every reader will notice in these volumes one or two traits of character which have not heretofore been ascribed to Mr. Adams. If they shall hold as prominent a place in the remaining pages of his diary as they hold in the part now printed,

the estimate of his character in these respects will need some revision.

To his selections from the diary Mr. C. F. Adams has prefixed a brief account of his father's early life and education, commencing his extracts with his father's appointment as Minister to Holland. John Quincy Adams, the eldest son of John and Abigail Adams, was born in that part of Braintree now called Quincy, on the 11th of July, 1767, and was baptized on the following day. When not quite eight years old he went with his mother to a height not far from the house where he was born, and from it witnessed the battle of Bunker Hill, listened to the roar of the artillery, and saw the burning of Charlestown. We .can readily believe that the impression was never effaced from his memory, and doubtless long afterward colored his feelings toward England. His early education, if such it may be called, was fragmentary and imperfect. "It does not appear," says Mr. C. F. Adams, "that the boy attended any regular school. What he learned was caught chiefly from elder persons around him." When he was in his eleventh year he went to Europe with his father, who had been appointed one of the commissioners to Paris, and was immediately put to school at Passy. After remaining there about six months the commission was recalled, and he returned home. Subsequently he spent six months more at school in Paris, four months at the public Latin school at Amsterdam, and a little less than five months at the University of Leyden. This was all the regular instruction which he received before entering Harvard College, to which he was admitted as a member of the junior class when he was a little more than eighteen. He was, however, in spite of these disadvantages, graduated with distinction in 1787.

As the natural consequence of the very irregular manner in which his education had been conducted, he was ignorant of many things which other young men learn, while he was thoroughly acquainted with subjects of which they acquire a knowledge only after much study and observation. A curious illustration of his ignorance of astronomy is found in his diary so late as November, 1813, when he was in his forty-seventh year. "One clear morning, about a fortnight since," he writes, "I remarked from my bed-chamber windows a certain group of stars forming a con