Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 353
those who have grown to great riches by their own exertions
have taken every opportunity, like Asa Packer, Pardee, Cornell,
A. T. Stewart, George Peabody, and George W. Childs, to give
liberally to the education of the masses from whom they sprang.
[September 15, I872.]
LXXIX.
I HAVE been enjoying, for the first time, William H. Seward's
"Life of John Quincy Adams," published in I849, and I pronounce it among the best biographies I ever read. It is the
tribute of one great man to another. I do not compare Mr.
Seward to John Quincy Adams, but if any writer in his fortyninth year-the age when Seward wrote his life of Adamswould now undertake the same work for Seward, he would produce a book of uncommon interest. Mr. Adams was over eighty
when he died in the Capitol of the country he had served so
well. Mr. Seward is now in his seventy-second year, and his
experience, though not marked by the austere lines of that of
Adams, is one of the eventful examples of our day. He " still
lives" at Auburn, New York, in a body wrecked by accident
and the assassin's dagger; but his intellect shines through the
shattered casket like light through a ruined castle. He will be
fortunate if the historian of his varied and somewhat grotesque
career-a combination as it was of curious evolutions, daring
experiments, and very great abilities-is as careful and thoughtful a delineator of human nature as the biographer of John
Quincy Adams.
But I did not intend to compliment Mr. Seward, nor to draw
a parallel between him and John Quincy Adams, in nothing
more striking than the fact that both are supposed to have kept
a close and graphic detail or diary of their political and official