Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 2
1828-05-02
Morning at the Office reading Blackstone. By application during the two days past I have progressed amazingly. Afternoon at my room copying Executive Record and reading. Took a walk over the Western Avenue and in the evening read part of Voltaire’s Louis 14th and finished the biographical sketch of Wolsey published by the English Society.1 On the whole my spirits have very considerably improved since the adoption of my new plan.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (London) was issuing in its Library of Useful Knowledge a series of brief biographies, including sketches of Cardinal Wolsey, by Katherine Thomson; Christopher Wren, by Charles Henry Bellenden Ker; Edward Coke, by Edward Plunkett Burke; William Caxton, by W. Stevenson; and Mohamet, by John Arthur Roebuck. These were later collected and published as Lives of Eminent Persons, London, 1833.