garded the Education itself as a fragment, unfinished, avowedly incomplete, which might well remain unpublished and so be forgotten. And this too was part of the general failure. Not only had he failed to impress himself upon the life of his time; he had not even redeemed that failure by solving the mystery of it.

If this interpretation is in any measure true (one can never be sure), there was an element of tragedy in the life of Henry Adams. But in any case it is well concealed in the Education as it was in life. It is not likely that many readers will see the tragedy of a failure that looks like success, or miss the philosophy-clothes that were never found. And indeed we may all be well content with the doings of this manikin that turns out to be so lively an ego. Henry Adams was worth a wilderness of philosophies. Perhaps we should have liked the book better if he could have taken himself more frankly, as a matter of course, for what he was-a man of wide experience, of altogether uncommon attainments, of extraordinarily incisive mental power; and if, resting on this assumption, he had told us more directly, as something we should like to know, what he had done, what people he had met and known, what events he had shared in or observed, and what he thought about it all. This he does do of course, in his own enigmatic way, in the process of explaining where and how he sought education and failed to find it; and fortunately, in the course of the leisurely journey, he takes us into many by-paths and shows us, by the easy play of his illuminating intelligence, much strange country, and many people whom we have never known, or have never known so intimately. When this happens, when the manikin forgets itself and its education-clothes, and merely describes people or types of mind or social customs, the result is wholly admirable. There are inimitable passages, and the number is large, which one cannot forget. One will not soon forget the young men of the Harvard class of '58, who were 'negative to a degree that in the end became positive and triumphant"; or the exquisitely drawn portrait of "Madame President", all things considered the finest passage in the book; or the picture of old John Quincy Adams coming slowly down-stairs one hot summer morning and with massive and silent solemnity leading the rebellious little Henry to school against his will; or yet the reflections of the little Henry himself (or was it the reflection of an older Henry?), who recognized on this occasion "that the President, though a tool of tyranny, had done his disreputable work with a certain intelligence. He had shown no temper, no irritation, no personal feeling, and had made no display of force. Above all, he had held his tongue."

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Those who have read the Autobiography of Charles Francis Adams will note with interest that Henry had a much higher opinion of his father than his elder brother had, which may have been due to the fact that he knew him much better. The elder Charles Francis, he says,

possessed the only perfectly balanced mind that ever existed in the name. For a hundred years, every newspaper scribbler had, with more or less obvious excuse, derided or abused the older Adamses for want of judgment. They abused Charles Francis for his judgment. . . . Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise-absence of selfassertion or self-consciousness-the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone-a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure. This unusual poise of judgment and temper, ripened by age, became the more striking to his son Henry as he learned to measure the mental faculties themselves, which were in no way exceptional either for depth or range. Charles Francis Adams's memory was hardly above the average; his mind was not bold like his grandfather's or restless like his father's, or imaginative or oratoricalstill less mathematical; but it worked with singular perfection, admirable self-restraint, and instinctive mastery of form. Within its range it was a model. . . . He stood alone. He had no master-hardly even his father. He had no scholars-hardly even his sons.

The estimate is just, the analysis penetrating. For analysis, Henry Adams had indeed a master's talent; and we are especially grateful for his dissection of the senatorial mind in general, and of the minds of such particular senators as Seward and Sumner and Lodge. But he was equally good at surprising the secret of the group mind, and of all groups the one that interested him most was the English. For studying the English he had ample opportunity; and although, according to custom, he professes never to have fathomed that peculiar people, his observations are always interesting and often profound. Even where his opportunity was limited he made the most of it. The picture of a whole judicial generation is made vivid in the chance statement that he never set eyes on a judge éxcept when his father took him to call on old Lord Lyndhurst, where they found old Lord Campbell, both abusing old Lord Brougham". Nothing interested him more than English "society". What it was, he never knew-"one wandered about in it like a maggot in cheese; it was not a hansom cab, to be got into, or out of, at dinner time." He was much perplexed by Motley's remark that the London dinner and the English country house were "the perfection of human society" But after having

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studied carefully and practised painfully what seemed to be the favorite accomplishment, he came to the conclusion that

the perfection of human society required that a man should enter a drawing-room where he was a total stranger, and place himself on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire, with an air of expectant benevolence, without curiosity, much as though he had dropped in at a charity concert, kindly disposed to applaud the performers and overlook mistakes. This ideal rarely succeeded in youth, and towards thirty it took a form of modified insolence and offensive patronage; but about sixty it mellowed into courtesy, kindliness, and even deference to the young which had extraordinary charm both in women and in men.

Upon mature reflection I cannot resist the temptation to quote the passage on being called a "begonia" by a United States senator, since it reveals Adams's genial irony at its best, as well as his opinion of senators—not by any means at its worst. Returning home from England on one occasion, he found that his article in the North American reviewing the last session of Congress, had been widely circulated by the Democrats as a campaign document. The inevitable reply was made by Senator Timothy Howe, of Wisconsin, who, besides refuting Adams's opinions,

did him the honor-most unusual and picturesque in a Senator's rhetoric of likening him to a begonia. The begonia is, or then was, a plant of such senatorial qualities as to make the simile, in intention, most flattering. Far from charming in its refinement, the begonia was remarkable for curious and showy foliage; it was conspicuous; it seemed to have no useful purpose; it insisted on standing always in the most prominent positions. Adams would have greatly liked to be a begonia in Washington, for this was rather his ideal of the successful statesman, and he thought about it still more when the Westminster Review for October brought him his article on the Gold Conspiracy, which was also instantly pirated on a great scale. Piratical he was himself henceforth driven to be, and he asked only to be pirated, for he was sure not to be paid; but the honors of piracy resemble the colors of the begonia; they are showy but not useful. Here was a tour de force he had never dreamed himself equal to performing: two long, dry, quarterly, thirty or forty page articles, appearing in quick succession, and pirated for audiences running well into the hundred thousands; and not one person, man or woman, offering him so much as a congratulation, except to call him a begonia.

The number of passages one would wish to quote is legion; but one must be content to say that the book is fascinating throughout -particularly perhaps in those parts which are not concerned with. the education of Henry Adams. Where this recondite and cosmic problem is touched upon, there are often qualifications to be made. The perpetual profession of ignorance and incapacity seems at times a bit disingenuous; and we have to do for the most part, not with the way things struck Adams at the time, but with the way

it seemed to him, as an old man looking back upon the "broken arch", they should have struck him. Besides, in the later chapters, in which he deals with the dynamic theory of history, the problem was so vague, even to himself, that we too often do not know what he wishes to convey. Apropos of the Chicago Fair, which like everything else in his later years linked itself to the business of the dynamo and the Virgin, he says: "Did he himself quite know what he meant? Certainly not! If he had known enough to state his problem, his education would have been completed at once." Is this the statement of a fact, or only the reflection of a perversity? We do not know. Most readers, at all events, having reached page 343, will not be inclined to dispute the assertion. Yet we must after all be grateful for this meaningless philosophy of history (the more so perhaps since it is meaningless); for without it we should never have had either the Mont-Saint-Michel or The Education of Henry Adams-" books which no gentleman's library" need contain, but which will long be read by the curious inquirer into the nature of the human heart.

Henry Adams lies buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington. The casual visitor might perhaps notice, on a slight elevation, a group of shrubs and small trees making a circular enclosure. If he should step up into this concealed spot, he would see on the opposite side a polished marble seat; and placing himself there he would find himself facing a seated figure, done in bronze, loosely wrapped in a mantle which, covering the body and the head, throws into strong relief a face of singular fascination. Whether man or woman, it would puzzle the observer to say. The eyes are half closed, in reverie rather than in sleep. The figure seems not to convey the sense either of life or death, of joy or sorrow, of hope or despair. It has lived, but life is done; it has experienced all things, but is now oblivious of all; it has questioned, but questions no more. The casual visitor will perhaps approach the figure, looking for a symbol, a name, a date-some revelation. There is none. The level ground, carpeted with dead leaves, gives no indication of a grave beneath. It may be that the puzzled visitor will step outside, walk around the enclosure, examine the marble shaft against which the figure is placed; and, finding nothing there, return to the seat and look long at the strange face. What does he make of it-this level spot, these shrubs, this figure that speaks and yet is silent? Nothing-or what he will. Such was life to Henry Adams, who lived long, and questioned seriously, and would not be content with the dishonest or the facile answer.

CARL BECKER.

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

BACK TO PEACE IN 18651

ONE reason why so little public attention was given to human reconstruction and the social aspects of demobilization in 1865 was that the then dominant generation, blending the individualism of Jefferson, of Emerson, of Andrew Jackson, and of John Stuart Mill, believed that such problems were for individual solution. Doubtless shell-shock cases existed-we have most of us known veterans probably still suffering from the failure to treat it properly; undoubtedly there were economic and social hardships which might have been ameliorated-yet on the whole the individualistic method, modified by the humane neighborliness which equally characterized the Americans of the period, did result in the successful absorption of the veterans into civil life. No historian would, and no lay person should, however, deduce therefrom that such a system would work equally well to-day. No one can say whether our economic system is more or less elastic than it was, though the richness of the unexploited frontier of 1865 probably was a determining advantage; but at least the localization of the immediate effects of the war to our country rendered conditions strikingly different, and the distinctively war industries were less important.

Of course, no amount of individualism could prevent the government from having some policy and that policy from having some effect upon the situation. That policy was demobilization at the earliest possible time, by units, at the most convenient place for the unit as a whole. There was no attempt to pick out pivotal men, or to use the interval between peace and discharge for schooling.

1 Professor Fish, now in London in charge of the interests there of the American University Union, sends this note with the following comment. [ED.] "These notes are the result of a long-continued study of the problem of the absorption of the discharged soldiers of 1865 into the life of the community, each phase of it having been at some time a leading topic of seminar treatment for at least a year. It was my purpose to have condensed the whole into an article for the Review. Separated as I have been from my notes, this has been impossible, but I felt that, in view of the immediate importance of the subject, it might be worth while to present at this time some conclusions even without the evidence. It will be appreciated how much I am indebted to various members of my successive seminars, some of whom I hope will produce reasoned articles on subjects here touched upon."