Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 8
1840-01-14
Clear. Division as usual. Evening at home.
There is nothing new. Even politics do not appear to furnish any variety. The world wags quietly. Office engaged in accounts and from thence to the Athenaeum where I rather wasted my time. Desultory, miscellaneous reading in a library is among the most fascinating of all pleasures to me although it creates rather superficial knowledge.
Home to read Oedipus Coloneus. I do not get on very fast with it. Afternoon the Townley Gallery, and Law’s Essay on Money and trade.1 My Wife went with Mrs. Story to Medford to spend the evening with Mrs. Gray, and I devoted the time to a thorough revision of my Lecture on credit which I find long. Began Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella.2
John Law’s Money and Trade Considered, with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money, first published in Edinburgh, 1709, is in vol. 13 of John Somers, Collection of Tracts, London, 1815.
A copy of the 3-vol., Boston, 1840, edn. of William Hickling Prescott’s History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella is in MQA.