Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1833-08-07
It was quite a warm day although early and at noon there were showers. I remained quietly ensconced in my Office. Read some Odes of Horace, and looked over a mass of old papers.
I derive a great deal of advantage from this occupation in the way of fixing dates of the events of the Revolution, and a good deal of the private history which gives the clue of mysterious public affairs. I made a discovery today of two or three additional private Journals of John Adams, and a curiosity in some old coins of the time of the English Commonwealth, 1649. These were inclosed in a letter from T. Brand Hollis,1 though this has no notice respecting them.
Little occurred that is worthy of particular notice. My father seemed 142better today, and in the evening I had an interesting conversation with him upon the old Massachusetts history, James Otis, Hutchinson, Bernard, Sam. Adams and the actors of that day. Afterwards, a little of Humphry Clinker. Mirror.
Thomas Brand Hollis, heir of Thomas Hollis, benefactor of Harvard College, was an English antiquarian, dissenter, and political radical whom JA visited in July 1786 and with whom he maintained a correspondence for eight years thereafter on a variety of subjects; see JA, Diary and Autobiography
, 3:188, 196–200. CFA’s expression of interest in the coins is apparently his first in a subject that was to absorb him for most of his life.