fully nullify any act of Congress which it regarded as unconstitutional.

Thus the bitterness grew worse and worse, till Adams dismissed from his cabinet the friends of Hamilton, calling them a "British faction." Hamilton, in turn, intrigued against Adams, and in 1800 the vote of South Carolina turned the scale in favor of the Republican electors. Jefferson and Burr, the two Republican nominees, had an equal number of votes-73; Adams having 65, Pinckney 64, and Jay 1. There was no choice, and the decision then went to the House of Representatives, which took six days to make its election, during which time the Constitution underwent such a party strain as has only once been equalled since that period. It ended in the election of Thomas Jefferson as President and of Aaron Burr as Vice-president, and on March 4, 1801, they were sworn into office.

On the very day of his inauguration Jefferson took a step towards what he called simplicity, and what his opponents thought vulgarity. The story that, instead of driving with a coach-and-six to be inaugurated, the new President rode on horseback to the Capitol, without even a servant, tied his horse to the fence, and walked in, has been discredited; but such an incident would have been characteristic. In the same way, thenceforward, instead of going with a state procession, at the opening of each Congress, to read his message in person, as had hitherto been the custom, he sent it in writing. He would have no especial levees nor invited guests, but was accessible to any one at any hour. He was so unwilling to have his birthday celebrated that he concealed it as much as possible. These ways were criticised as those of a

demagogue. The President was reproached with a desire to conciliate the mob, or, as it was then sometimes called-as, for instance, in Mrs. Adams's letters -the "mobility.' His reason for sending a message, according to that stout Federalist William Sullivan, was because a speech could be answered and a message could not; although Sullivan asserts, in almost the next sentence, that Congress was utterly subservient to him, and it could therefore have made. no difference. The discontinuance of formal levees is called by Sullivan "the abolition of all official dignity," and "descending to the lowest level."

Dennie's Portfolio, the best newspaper that had yet appeared in the United States, contained, August 18, 1804, among eulogies of the poems of Burns and burlesques upon the early lyrical effusions of Wordsworth, an imaginary diary, supposed to have been picked up near the White House in the previous February. In this the President was made to say: "Ordered my horse-never ride with a servant-looks proud-mob doesn't like it-must gull the boobies. Adams wouldn't bend so-would rather lose his place -knew nothing of the world." In another place he describes himself as meeting a countryman who took him for a Virginia overseer, and who talked politics. The countryman asked him to name one man of real character in the Democratic party. The President, after some stammering, suggested Jefferson, on which the countryman burst into a broad laugh, and asked him to enumerate his virtues-would he begin with his religion, chastity, courage, or honesty?-on which the President indignantly rode away. "Had he been as little as Sammy H. Smith," he adds, “I think I should have struck him." Ever since Jeffer

son's career as Governor of Virginia, the charge of personal cowardice had been unreasonably familiar.

The fictitious diary also contains some indecorous references to a certain "black Sally," a real or imaginary personage of that day whose companionship was thought discreditable to the President; also to the undoubted personal slovenliness of the Chief Magistrate-a point in which he showed an almost studied antagonism to the scrupulous proprieties of Washington. When Merry, the newly appointed British ambassador, went in official costume to be presented to the President at an hour previously appointed, he found himself, by his own narrative, “introduced to a man as the President of the United States, not merely in an undress, but actually standing in slippers down at the heels, and both pantaloons, coat, and underclothes indicative of utter slovenliness and indifference to appearance, and in a state of negligence actually studied." The Minister went away with the very natural conviction that the whole scene was prepared and intended as an insult, not to himself, but to the sovereign whom he represented.

Merry's inference was probably quite unjust. A man may be habitually careless about his costume. without meaning any harm by it; and the pre-eminent demagogue of the French Revolution, Robespierre, always appeared exquisitely dressed, and wore a fresh bouquet every day. Yet all these points of costume or propriety were then far weightier matters than we can now conceive. The habits of the last century in respect to decorum were just receding; men were for better or worse-ceasing to occupy themselves about personal externals, and the "customary suit of solemn black" was only just coming

into vogue. The old régime was dying, and its disappearance was as conspicuous in England as in France, in America as in England. This is easily illustrated.

If we were to read in some old collection of faded letters a woman's animated description of a country visit paid to one who seemed the counterpart of Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley, we should naturally assume that the date and address of the letter must be very far away in space and time. Suppose that the narrator should tell us of a fine country-house surrounded by lofty elms forming two avenues, the one leading to the high-road, the other to the village church. There are family portraits in the hall, bookcase containing the first edition of the Spectator, and a buffet of old plate and rare china. The guest remains over Sunday, and her host, wearing wig and cocked hat and red cloak, escorts her down the avenue of elms through the rural church-yard to the village church. At every step they pass villagers who make profound obeisance, and at the conclusion of the service the whole congregation remains standing until this ancient gentleman and his friends have passed down the broad aisle. Who would not fancy this a scene from some English hamlet in the days of Queen Anne? Yet it all took place in the last century, and in the quiet village of Harvard, Massachusetts, little more than thirty miles from Boston, and noted as the abode of a little Shaker community, and the scene of Howells's Undiscovered Country. The narrator was the late Mrs. Josiah Quincy, and her host was Henry Bromfield, elder brother of the well-known benefactor of the Boston Athenæum. He was simply a "survival" of the old way of living. He spoke of

State Street as King Street and Summer Street as Seven-star Lane, and his dress and manners were like his phrases. Such survivals were still to be found, here and there all over the country, at the precise time when Jefferson became President and shocked Merry with his morning slippers and Sullivan by opening his doors to all the world.

For the rest, Jefferson's way of living in Washington exhibited a profuse and rather slovenly hospitality, which at last left him deeply in debt. He kept open house, had eleven servants (slaves) from his plantation, besides a French cook and steward and an Irish coachman. His long dining-room was crowded every day, according to one witness, who tested its hospitality for sixteen days in succession; it was essentially a bachelor establishment, he being then a widower, and we hear little of ladies among his visitors. There was no etiquette at these great dinners; they sat down at four and talked till midnight. The city of Washington was still a frontier settlement, in that phase of those outposts when they consist of many small cabins and one hotel at which everybody meets. The White House was the hotel; there was no "society" anywhere else, because no other dwelling had a drawing-room large enough to receive it. Pennsylvania Avenue was still an abyss of yellow mud, on which nobody could walk and where carriages were bemired. Gouverneur Morris, of New York, described Washington as the best city in the world for a future residence. "We want nothing here," he said, "but houses, cellars, kitchens, wellinformed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of this kind, to make our city perfect."

Besides new manners, the new President urged new