Martinsburg Gazette

MISCELLANY.

From the New York Express.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

This venerable and extraordinary man spoke to the New York Lyceum nearly an hour and a half on Wednesday evening, the 18th inst., from a written address, principally upon Society, its history, progress, and purposes. A great crowd—immense, indeed, considering the great inclemency of the weather—were present, who listened throughout, unwearied even by the dryness of the subject, and the feebleness of the speaker—not intellectual feebleness, far from it even, but the physical feebleness of voice and manner, the natural result of a body that time affects, while the mind is as strong as ever, and more richly endowed, of course.

Mr. Adams was received with great enthusiasm, and his appearance drew forth bursts of applause. At first it was quite difficult to hear what he had to say, but he so drew the attention of the audience, and hushed it into perfect silence, that his lowest notes were heard all well, except where rendered indistinct by the huskiness of his voice. The fire of the young man though was in his manner. His venerable bald head seemed illuminated within him. Where he dwelt upon Love, the fairer sex, and their enchantments of society and home, a beau of the saloon or boudoir could not have been more impassioned, or made his devotions with warmer zeal. His heart must be as hot as when of the age of sixteen.

The main topics of the Address were devoted to a sketch of the condition of man in the hunter's, the pastoral, and the agricultural state. The Hunter's life in the forest and thicket, in pursuit of game, with no home, no fixed livelihood, no social relations—all excitement and all passion—destruction the only aim and end of his living, were described with a master's pen. The better fate of the Shepherd, his repose and meditation, the conservative efforts of this being,—the subjugation of the Bull and the Ram to the purposes of his existence, with his subsequent contemplation of the Heavens, and the astrology that interwove the Bull and the Ram with the constellations of the sky, were not forgotten.— Woman, said the Lecturer, is the Hunter's only animal, the first of the animals of the Shepherd, but the wife and bosom companion of the Husbandman, whose happy and wiser state, he proceeded afterwards to describe.

Love, women and matrimony were next dwelt upon—in poetry and poetic prose. So rapturous was the venerable Ex-President upon woman, that anybody might know he had the worthiest and best of wives. Alas, for the old bachelors of his auditory, who heard him descant with so many years of experience over his head, upon the comforts and glories of Matrimony! A beautiful tribute he paid to Religion too. He ended his lecture with some remarks, the best advice his experience, as he said, enabled him to give, upon what best created happiness, social and self, viz:

1st. A fixed inheritable habitation.
2d. A state of wedlock.
3d. A belief in, or a worship of, one only Supreme Being.

We know not when we have been more gratified. How melancholy that such a mind, and so much learning are not inheritable too!