I have not dwelt on the minor events of his presidency, such as his appointments to foreign missions, since these did not seriously affect the welfare of the country.  I cannot go into unimportant events and quarrels, as in the case of his dismissal of Pickering and other members of his Cabinet.  Such matters belong to the historians, especially those who think it necessary to say everything they can,—­to give minute details of all events.  These small details, appropriate enough in works written for specialists, are commonly dry and uninteresting; they are wearisome to the general reader, and are properly soon forgotten, as mere lumber which confuses rather than instructs.  No historian can go successfully into minute details unless he has the genius of Macaulay.  On this rock Freeman, with all his accuracy, was wrecked; as an historian he can claim only a secondary place, since he had no eye to proportion,—­in short, was no artist, like Froude.  He was as heavy as most German professors, to whom one thing is as important as another.  Accuracy on minute points is desirable and necessary, but this is not the greatest element of success in an historian.

Some excellent writers of history think that the glory of Adams was brightest in the period before he became president, when he was a diplomatist,—­that as president he made great mistakes, and had no marked executive ability.  I think otherwise.  It seems to me that his special claims to the gratitude of his country must include the wisdom of his administration in averting an entangling war, and guiding the ship of state creditably in perplexing dangers; that in most of his acts, while filling the highest office in the gift of the people, he was patient, patriotic, and wise.  We forget the exceeding difficulties with which he had to contend, and the virulence of his enemies.  What if he was personally vain, pompous, irritable, jealous, stubborn, and fond of power?  These traits did not swerve him from the path of duty and honor, nor dim the lustre of his patriotism, nor make him blind to the great interests of the country as he understood them,—­the country whose independence and organized national life he did so much to secure.  All cavils are wasted, and worse than wasted, on such a man.  His fame will shine forevermore, in undimmed lustre, to bless mankind.  Small is that critic who sees the defects, but has no eye for the splendors, of a great career!

There is but little more to be said of Adams after the completion of his term of office.  He retired to his farm in Quincy, a part of Braintree, for which he had the same love that Washington had for Mount Vernon, and Jefferson for Monticello.  In the placid rest of agricultural life, and with a comfortable independence, his later days were spent.  The kindly sentiments of his heart grew warmer with leisure, study, and friendly intercourse with his town’s-people.  He even renewed a pleasant correspondence with Jefferson.  He took the most interest, naturally, in the political career of his son, John Quincy Adams, whom he persuaded to avoid extremes, so that it is difficult to say with which political party he sympathized the most. In mediis tutissimus ibis.