It is perhaps inevitable that any biography of Henry Adams will bring to its subject the same air of redundancy that a monument to Sir Christopher Wren must possess. "Sirequires monument, circumspice," can no more truly be said of the one than of the other, for they were both individuals whose lives, ambitions, and philosophies are expressed only in their works. Yet James Truslow Adams has attempted a short study of Henry Adams to serve as an introduction for the collected works of the author of St. Michael and Chartres."

The present biographer has deliberately chosen to escape the pitfalls left open by placing any personal interpretation upon the life or works of his subject. In large part he is willing to confine himself to a chronological report of Adams' travels and occupations or to the publication dates of articles and books. The result is a rather bloated enlargement of the life already presented by Mr. Adams in his "Adams Family." It contributes little not already made public in that book; much as the "March of Democracy" adds little to the information contained in "The Epic of America" or any other standard work on American History. Its importance would, therefore, seem limited to a legitimate introduction to the "Collected Works of Henry Adams," were it not for the fact that Mr. Adams says in his own preface that "there is no reason for withholding longer from publication the only biography of him which has yet been written." If such is the case, and the biography is issued as a full length portrait which would be its only excuse one could wish for a fuller and more penetrating study.

Although one must look about him in St. Paul's for the memorial to Sir Christopher Wren, the Search is greatly expedited by a guide book which will point out to the eager novitiate the subtleties of construction--if one can speak with impunity of the subtleties of St. Paul's. Thus Mr. Adams could have presented his public with a competent Baedeker which is greatly needed by the novitiate. There is much in this sensitive, keen, and penetrating intellect that requires enlightenment. Burdened from youth with the consciousness of generations and of the necessities of success, Henry Adams drifted, until old age quieted, but did not satisfy him, in search, not of eternal verity and art, but power. As a young man he swayed on his intellectual toes between polities, literature and the press, uncertain, not as to which would bring him the most richness of life, but only the greatest recognition and puissance. This attitude of mind, literally forced upon him by his own awareness of his ancestors, made him throughout his life a casuistic ironic appraiser of his times; and more, an over careful critic of himself. Lacking any great emotional reservoirs, he felt that artists worked only to gain social superiority, he based his judgments and his analyses almost wholly upon intellectual precepts. It was this cold intelligence that made him so acutely aware of the lacks of his time and kept him, unlike his more passionate ancestors, aloof from action.

All this Mr. Adams tells us, but all this can be gleaned from the "Education of Henry Adams." Beyond lies the biographer's opportunity for evaluation and philosophic estimation, but beyond Mr. Adams does not go. Should it not be possible for one who has, in Mr. Adams' happy phrase, "lived with the writings of Henry Adams" to give some suggestion of Adams' influence upon his times, of his place in an era? John Adams was the fearless spokesman of his period, John Quincy Adams was the barker of the side show of the 1820's, '30's, and '40's. So much is a matter of history; these two men caught something of the spirit of the fragments of time in which they lived, and they directed in some part the course of events. Was not Henry Adams, ironic, questioning, dubious, ill directed in his search for a manifest destifly as much the monarch--a suitable Adams word--among his contemporaries? But on this or on any other philosophic aspect of his subject Mr. Adams refuses to speculate. Only once, after carefully heading his bet, does he launch out into the realm of personal speculation. "I may," he says, "be quite wrong, but from living with the writings of Henry Adams I carry the impression that the key to much of his life and attitude lies in the sentences I have just quoted. The dream of power was always, until it was too late, recurring to him, but he was always a little 'dazed, doubtful, shy." In other words, it appears to me, from Adams' own words "the sense (of power) came like vertigo leaving the brain dazed, doubtful, shy," that he was one of the few in his time who could perceive the vastness of our political and social combinations and one of the very few who was overawed by them. As John had grasped the problem of independence, so Henry saw the truths of the dying quarter of the nineteenth century. But where his ancestors could lead, he could not; and where they would act, he would not. Why this is true is a matter of speculation, not fact. It is my opinion that it lies within the province of any trained historian who attempts the life of Henry Adams to supply this speculation, that those who read without sufficient previous knowledge may have guidance."