The distinguished characteristics of his life were beneficent labor and personal Contentment.  He never sought wealth, but devoted himself to the service of mankind.  Yet, by the practice of frugality and method, he secured the enjoyment of dealing forth continually no stinted charities, and died in affluence.  He never solicited place or preferment, and had no partizan combinations or even connections; yet he received honors which eluded the covetous grasp of those who formed parties, rewarded friends and proscribed enemies; and he filled a longer period of varied and distinguished service than ever fell to the lot of any other citizen.  In every stage of this progress he was content.  He was content to be president, minister, representative, or citizen.

Stricken in the midst of this service, in the very act of rising to debate, he fell into the arms of conscript fathers of the Republic.  A long lethargy supervened and oppressed his senses.  Nature rallied the wasting powers, on the verge of the grave, for a very brief period.  But it was long enough for him.  The rekindled eye showed that the re-collected mind was clear, calm, and vigorous.  His weeping family, and his sorrowing compeers were there.  He surveyed the scene and knew at once its fatal import.  He had left no duty unperformed; he had no wish unsatisfied; no ambition unattained; no regret, no sorrow, no fear, no remorse.  He could not shake off the dews of death that gathered on his brow.  He could not pierce the thick shades that rose up before him.  But he knew that eternity lay close by the shores of time.  He knew that his Redeemer lived.  Eloquence, even in that hour, inspired him with his ancient sublimity of utterance.  “This,” said the dying man.  “This is the end of earth.”  He paused for a moment, and then added, “I am content.”  Angels might well draw aside the curtains of the skies to look down on such a scene—­a scene that approximated even to that scene of unapproachable sublimity, not to be recalled without reverence, when, in mortal agony, one who spake as never man spake, said, “It is finished!”

Only two years after the birth of John Quincy Adams, there appeared on an island in the Mediterranean sea, a human spirit newly born, endowed with equal genius, without the regulating qualities of justice and benevolence which Adams possessed in an eminent degree.  A like career opened to both—­born like Adams, a subject of a king—­the child of more genial skies, like him, became in early life a patriot and a citizen of a new and great Republic.  Like Adams he lent his service to the State in precocious youth, and in its hour of need, and won its confidence.  But unlike Adams he could not wait the dull delays of slow and laborious, but sure advancement.  He sought power by the hasty road that leads through fields of carnage, and he became, like Adams, a supreme