neither of the principals took part. His chief work is an ‘Essay on Mr. Hume's Essay on Miracles, by William Adams, M.A., chaplain to the Bishop of Llandaff,’ 1752. It is said to have been the first answer to Hume, whose essay was first published in 1748 (Burton's Life of Hume, i. 285), and was a temperate statement of the argument that the divine power supplies an adequate cause for the production of the alleged effects, which are therefore credible upon sufficient evidence.
[Life in Chalmers's Dictionary ‘from private information;’ Gent. Mag. vol. lix.; Rawlinson MSS. fol. 16, 4; Nichols's Illustrations, v. 277; Boswell's Johnson.]
ADAMS, WILLIAM (fl. 1790), potter, was a favourite pupil of Josiah Wedgwood. ‘While with him he executed some of his finest pieces in the jasper ware. He subsequently went into business on his own account, and produced much of this beautiful ware, modelled with great care.’ Leaving Wedgwood he settled at Tunstall, and started a business under the style of ‘William Adams & Co.’ An exquisite vase, said to be Wedgwood's last work, was made by him in conjunction with William Adams. Adams died between 1804 and 1807 (Chaffers, 672). By the excellence of his work he might claim a high place amongst English ceramists. He made, however, no fresh departure in the art, and produced little that was not imitative.
[Eliza Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood, ii. 515–16; Shaw's History of Staffordshire Potteries; Chaffers's Keramic Gallery, figs. 334, 335; Chaffers's Marks and Monograms on Pottery and Porcelain, p. 671.]
ADAMS, Sir WILLIAM. [See Rawson.]
ADAMS, WILLIAM (1814–1848), author of the ‘Sacred Allegories,’ was a member of an old Warwickshire family, being the second son of Mr. Serjeant Adams, by his marriage with Miss Eliza Nation, daughter of a well-known Exeter banker. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and between the time of his leaving school and entering the university was the pupil of Dr. Brasse, author of ‘Brasse's Greek Gradus,’ by whom his great abilities were first appreciated. He obtained a postmastership at Merton, and in 1836 took a double first-class, his elder brother having gained a similar distinction eighteen months previously. In 1837 he became fellow and tutor of his college, and in 1840 vicar of St. Peter's-in-the-East, a Merton living generally held by a resident fellow. With his immediate predecessor at St. Peter's, Bishop Hamilton, and his immediate successor, Bishop Hobhouse, Mr. Adams was very intimate. He always took a deep interest in the welfare of the parish, and has left us an interesting memorial of his incumbency in his well-known ‘Warnings of the Holy Week,’ a set of lectures preached at St. Peter's in Holy Week, 1842. In the spring of this year he went to Eton as one of the examiners for the Newcastle scholarship, and, while bathing there, was all but drowned, and caught a violent cold which, flying to his lungs, ultimately proved fatal. It was hoped that a few months of residence in a warm climate would restore his health, and he accordingly passed the winter of 1842 in Madeira. But the disease had gained too firm a hold to be checked, and he resigned his living, settling at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. Here he passed the last few years of his life, busily engaged with his pen, and taking part in every effort to improve the spiritual condition of the neighbourhood. One of his last public acts was to lay the foundation-stone of the new church at Bonchurch; and a few months later his remains were laid in the churchyard of the old church, where, by a happy design, his grave has the ‘shadow of the cross’ ever resting upon it.
All Adams's allegories were published when he was virtually a dying man. ‘The Shadow of the Cross,’ written at Arborne Cottage, near Chertsey, in the summer of 1842, was followed by the ‘Distant Hills’ in 1844. The design of both was to show the privileges of the baptised Christian and the danger of forfeiting those privileges. His next work, the ‘Fall of Crœsus,’ was less successful; not from any falling off in point of composition, for everything that Adams wrote was written in the same pure and graceful style, but because the choice of subject was less happy. It is simply an English version of the story of Herodotus, with a christian colouring. But his next production, the ‘Old Man's Home,’ was the most successful of all his works. Perhaps the fact that the scene of it was laid in the beautiful Undercliff, which he knew and loved so well and described so vividly, may have been one cause of its success. But the story itself is a singularly impressive one, and additional interest will be attached to the ‘old man,’ who is represented as hovering on the borderland between sanity and insanity, but full of true aspirations which to his keepers were unintelligible, when it is known that the author's father had done much to promote a more considerate treat-
