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dress," he bequeathed a legacy of practical political wisdom which it will be well for them to remember and profit by. In this immortal document he insisted that the union of the States was "a main pillar" in the real independence of the people. He also entreated them to "steer clear of any permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

At Mount Vernon Washington found constant occupation in the supervision of his various estates. It was while taking his usual round on horseback to look after his farms, that, on the 12th of December, 1799, he encountered a cold, winter storm. He reached home chill and damp. The next day he had a sore throat, with some hoarseness. By the morning of the 14th he could scarcely swallow. "I find I am going," said he to a friend. "I believed from the first that the attack would be fatal." That night, between ten and eleven, he expired, without a struggle or a sigh, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, his disease being acute laryngitis. Three days afterward his remains were deposited in the family tombs at Mount Vernon, where they still repose.

Washington left a reputation on which there is no stain. "His character," says Irving, "possessed fewer inequalities, and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man. *It seems as if Providence had endowed him in a pre-eminent degree with the qualities

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requisite to fit him for the high destiny he was called upon to fulfill."

In stature Washington was six feet two inches in height, well proportioned, and firmly built. His hair was brown, his eyes blue and set far apart. From boyhood he was famous for great strength and agility. Jefferson pronounced him "the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback." He was scrupulously neat, gentlemanly, and punctual, and always dignified and reserved.

In the resolution passed upon learning of his death, the National House of Representatives described him for the first time in that well-known phrase, "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," a tribute which succeding generations have continued to bestow upon Washington without question or doubt. By common consent to him is accorded as pre-eminently appropriate the title, " Pater Patriæ,"-the "Father of his Country."

Of Washington, Lord Brougham says: "It will be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to omit no occasion of commemorating this illustrious man; and until time shall be no more will a test of the progress our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington."

S

JOHN ADAMS,

ECOND President of the United States,

was born at Braintree, now Quincy, Mass.,

October 19th, 1735. He was the eldest son of John Adams, a farmer, and Susanna Boylston. Graduating from Harvard in 1755, he studied law, defraying his expenses by teaching. In 1764, having meanwhile been admitted to the bar, he married Miss Abigail Smith, a lady whose energy of character contributed largely to his subsequent advancement.

As early as 1761, we find young Adams looking forward, with prophetic vision, to American Independence. When the memorable Stamp Act was passed in 1765, he joined heart and soul in opposition to it. A series of resolutions which he drew up against it and presented to the citizens of Braintree was adopted also by more than forty other towns in the Province. He took the advanced grounds that, it was absolutely void— Parliament having no right to tax the Colonies.

In 1768 he removed to Boston. The rise of the young lawyer was now rapid, and he was the lead. ing man in many prominent cases. When, in September, 1774, the first Colonial Congress met, at Philadelphia, Adams was one of the five Delegates from Massachusetts. In that Congress he took a prominent part. He it was who, on the 6th of