Traditionally the Tories were easier to deal with than
the Whigs, and Minister Adams had no reason to regret the change.
His personal relations were excellent and his personal weight
increased year by year. On that score the private secretary had
no cares, and not much copy. His own position was modest, but it
was enough; the life he led was agreeable; his friends were all
he wanted, and, except that he was at the mercy of politics, he
felt much at ease. Of his daily life he had only to reckon so
many breakfasts; so many dinners; so many receptions, balls,
theatres, and country-parties; so many cards to be left; so many
Americans to be escorted -- the usual routine of every young
American in a Legation; all counting for nothing in sum, because,
even if it had been his official duty -- which it was not -- it
was mere routine, a single, continuous, unbroken act, which led
to nothing and nowhere except Portland Place and the grave.
The path that led somewhere was the English habit of mind which
deepened its ruts every day. The English mind was like the London
drawing-room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and
fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were never meant to go
together, and could be arranged in any relation without making a
whole, except by the square room. Philosophy might dispute about
innate ideas till the stars died out in the sky, but about innate
tastes no one, except perhaps a collie dog, has the right to
doubt; least of all, the Englishman, for his tastes are his
being; he drifts after them as unconsciously as a honey-bee
drifts after his flowers, and, in England, every one must drift
with him.
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