“I answer your question,—­Is death an evil?  It is not an evil.  It is a blessing to the individual and to the world; yet we ought not to wish for it, till life becomes insupportable.  We must wait the pleasure and convenience of the ‘Great Teacher.’  Winter is as terrible to me as to you.  I am almost reduced in it to the life of a bear or a torpid swallow.  I cannot read, but my delight is to hear others read; and I tax all my friends most unmercifully and tyrannically against their consent.

“The ass has kicked in vain; all men say the dull animal has missed the mark.

“This globe is a theatre of war; its inhabitants are all heroes.  The little eels in vinegar, and the animalcules in pepper-water, I believe, are quarrelsome.  The bees are as warlike as the Romans, Russians, Britons, or Frenchmen.  Ants, caterpillars, and canker-worms are the only tribes among whom I have not seen battles; and Heaven itself, if we believe Hindoos, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, has not always been at peace.  We need not trouble ourselves about these things, nor fret ourselves because of evil doers; but safely trust the ‘Ruler with his skies.’  Nor need we dread the approach of dotage; let it come if it must. ******, it seems, still delights in his four stories; and Starke remembered to the last his Bennington, and exulted in his glory; the worst of the evil is, that our friends will suffer more by our imbecility than we ourselves. * * * * * * * * * “In wishing for your health and happiness, I am very selfish; for I hope for more letters.  This is worth more than five hundred dollars to me; for it has already given me, and will continue to give me, more pleasure than a thousand.  Mr. Jay, who is about your age, I am told, experiences more decay than you do. 
                            “I am your old friend,
          
                                         “John Adams.”

This correspondence excited attention in Europe.  The editor of the London Morning Chronicle prefaces it with the following remarks:—­

“What a contrast the following correspondence of the two rival Presidents of the greatest Republic of the world, reflecting an old age dedicated to virtue, temperance, and philosophy, presents to the heart-sickening details, occasionally disclosed to us, of the miserable beings who fill the thrones of the continent.  There is not, perhaps, one sovereign of the continent, who in any sense of the word can be said to honor our nature, while many make us almost ashamed of it.  The curtain is seldom drawn aside without exhibiting to us beings worn out with vicious indulgence, diseased in mind, if not in body, the creatures of caprice and insensibility.  On the other hand, since the foundation of the American Republic, the chair has never been filled by a man, for whose life (to say the least,) any American need once to blush.  It must, therefore, be some compensation to the Americans for the absence of pure monarchy, that when they look upwards their eyes are not always met by vice, and meannesss, and often idiocy.”