humility which has puzzled so many commentators,
did not think so highly of his HISTORY, and he does
not omit to tell us that the majority of those friends
who read the first volumes in manuscript, advised
against publication. He describes it in his EDUCA-
TION:

" Adams . . . had even published a dozen volumes of
American history for no other purpose than to satisfy
himself whether, by the severest process of stating, with
the least possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in
such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could fix
for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human
movement. The result had satisfied him as little as at
Harvard College. Where he saw sequence, other men saw
something different, and no one saw the same unit of
measure.''

"To fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence
of human movement"--that is the criterion of every
artist. The moment, though, is supremely important,
especially to a philosophic historian seeking a "unit
of measure." It was not a matter of chance that
Adams chose to chronicle one of the most significant
and critical moments of American history, the Jef-
ferson and Madison administrations, and it behooves
the critic to evaluate not only the beauty but the truth
of his work of art. The period is from 1800 to 1817,--
the high tide and the ebb of Jeffersonian democracy.
It was a period that was ushered in with what its
protagonist considered a bloodless revolution and that
closed with the dull boom of cannon still reverberating

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