Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 6
1835-03-04
Morning cold but the day was remarkably fine. I awoke with a sore throat and more unpleasant feelings than usual. Office and from thence to the House where I remained some time in assorting pamphlets. This was perhaps imprudent, as the House was very cold and I became much chilled. I wrote my Diary and took a walk. Nothing material. A vast deal of talk and speculation about the French question but in fact very little done. And the whole kettle is boiling. A little of Ovid.
After dinner, I began to feel the approach of head ach which ter-89minated as they generally do with me. This is the second I have had this winter. I managed however to go on and read Grimm and a translation of Cuvier’s Theory of fossils which I have procured for want of the original.1 I also looked over a Pamphlet relating to Harvard University published by Mr. F. C. Gray defending it from many charges commonly made. It is fighting at a windmill. I do not perceive any thing in it within my province.2 In the evening Mr. Shepherd came in and sat for some time. I was growing worse so fast that I had not much time to enjoy conversation. But I could not have read so that I made it out better than if alone. Mr. Brooks went to a Geological Lecture. Retired early.
Vol. 11 of the 16-vol. English edition of Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom, London, 1827–1835, is devoted to “Fossil Remains.”
The pamphlet almost certainly was the Letter to Governor Lincoln in Relation to Harvard University, Boston, 1831, which Francis Calley Gray, a member of the Corporation, had signed and published. CFA, apparently, had turned to it as a part of his background reading in preparing his own article “in relation to Harvard University,” which he had begun more broadly on “the subject of education,” and which had occupied him at intervals during the preceding month (see above, entries for 30 Jan.,