pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that were of more importance
than the spirit accidentally involved in it. And, in truth, the
original manuscript has always something which print itself must
inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of
hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical execution, bring
us close to the writer, and perhaps convey some of those subtle
intimations for which language has no shape.

There are several letters from John Adams, written in a small, hasty,
ungraceful hand, but earnest, and with no unnecessary flourish. The
earliest is dated at Philadelphia, September 26, 1774, about twenty days
after the first opening of the Continental Congress. We look at this
old yellow document, scribbled on half a sheet of foolscap, and ask of
it many questions for which words have no response. We would fain know
what were their mutual impressions, when all those venerable faces, that
have since been traced on steel, or chiselled out, of marble, and thus
made familiar to posterity, first met one another's gaze! Did one
spirit harmonize them, in spite of the dissimilitude of manners between
the North and the South, which were now for the first time brought into
political relations? Could the Virginian descendant of the Cavaliers,
and the New-Englander with his hereditary Puritanism,--the aristocratic
Southern planter, and the self-made man from Massachusetts or
Connecticut,--at once feel that they were countrymen and brothers? What
did John Adams think of Jefferson?--and Samuel Adams of Patrick Henry?
Did not North and South combine in their deference for the sage
Franklin, so long the defender of the colonies in England, and whose
scientific renown was already world-wide? And was there yet any
whispered prophecy, any vague conjecture, circulating among the
delegates, as to the destiny which might be in reserve for one stately
man, who sat, for the most part, silent among them?--what station he was