Adams Family Correspondence, volume 8
Your old Acquaintance Mr Harrison of Cadiz will deliver you
this, if you should not, as I hope you will, be Sett off for this place before he can
reach Braintree.—
I expect you, here indeed in a Week or ten days at farthest, from this date. Mrs Washington is arrived. My House and Garden want us very
much. We Shall be obliged to bring all our Furniture and most of our Books, except the
Law books and the great Collections, such as the Byzantine History, Muratory, the
Encyclopædia &c1 But I hope you will
come on, and send Beds and necessaries as soon as possible. Barnard has delivered here,
some Trunks & Cases but no Keys nor Letter informing what is in them.— We must make
this place our home, and think no more of Braintree, for four years, not forgetting
however our Friends there. and what is the most disagreable of all: We must live, as I
apprehend, in a Style much below our Rank and station.— I Said four Years, upon the
supposition that the Government should support itself so long: but it must be supported
by Providence if at all, against the usual Course of Things, if the human Means of
supporting it, should not be soon better understood. You and I can live however as
plainly as any of them,
yours most tenderly
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs Adams.”
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6
vols., London, 1777–1788; Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Annali
d'Italia dal principio dell' era volgare, sino all' anno 1750, 12 vols. in 6,
Naples, 1773; and Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 3d edn., 38 vols., Geneva, 1778, are all in
JA's library at MB (
Catalogue of
JA's Library
).