Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 4
1832-10-11
Clouds and occasional heavy rain. I remained quietly at home occupied in reading Lingard and comparing with Hume, and in correcting Text with my father. Few men have left closer pictures of their mind in youth, than my grandfather. And to all it is a study of some interest. We came today to the place where a transition of eleven momentous years to him occurred, and where you jump from his hopes and prospects, his wishes and his discouragements, to the hour of his success and establishment in the world. Is it not a lesson. He was six and twenty in the first instance.1
Afternoon, lost my time in looking over an Account of the trial of two Mr. Sheares for Treason in Ireland in 1798.2 Cruel enough. Evening with the family. Read Dr. Granville who is a little too minute to be interesting. Lingard and Idlers afterwards.
In a small stitched booklet in which JA recorded his early reading and studies and in which he made some journal entries (D/JA/4 in the Adams Papers) there is a gap of eleven years between the entry for 20 Nov. 1761 and the next entry, that for 21 Nov. 1772. In the latter entry JA philosophized on the changes that had occurred during the interval (JA, Diary and Autobiography
, 1:224; 2:67–68). CFA’s words here should probably not be understood to mean that at this time he and JQA had not yet come upon some or all of JA’s 377journal entries, somewhat irregularly made, during the intervening period in one or another of the booklets he used for his diary (same, 1:226, 235, 252, et seq.).
Report of the Trial for High Treason of Henry and John Sheares, Dublin, 1798.
1832-10-12
Beautiful morning. I do not know that we have a pleasanter month than this when it is tolerably fair. I read a little, but passed most of my time in company with my Mother at the Wharf in an unsuccessful attempt to catch fish. This is rather a waste of time, but I do not do it very often, and it is at least a pleasanter way than that of which I am commonly guilty. Returned home and compared Text for an hour with my father. After which at dinner we had Company, Mrs. Angier and Miss Adams, Miss Anna Harrod1 and Miss Smith. Nothing material passed.
Afternoon very short. Read but a very little of Dr. Lingard. His book interests me though I read it with distrust. His Account of Edward I and the conquest of Scotland is in some respects new and worth considering. I have long since lost my faith in most of the Romance of History. As the world was always much the same,
Presumably one of the daughters of Charles Harrod, brother of Mrs. TBA (vol. 2:166).
1832-10-13
Mild and pleasant day. Miss Julia Gorham accompanied me to town today. She returns home much to the regret, I believe, of all the family.1 The company of young ladies always contributes much to enliven a House, when they are not bent upon doing mischief. My principal occupation in town was to go to the House and see that every thing was in order there, to attend to several commissions and regulate Accounts. Henry Brooks called to see me a few minutes, and I conversed with Mr. Peabody upon political affairs. The proceedings of the Worcester Convention are to me very singular. The nomination of such a man as S. T. Armstrong for the place of Lieutenant Governor is a political catch like that of Wells last year, for the Mayor’s situation.2 The political news received this day from Pennsylvania is encouraging.3
378Returned to Quincy, and read in the Afternoon the rest of the reign of Edward the first in Lingard which I afterwards compared with Hume. The material variations consist in the account of the course of the Clergy in resisting the exactions of the Crown, and in the accounts of the Scotch and Welsh conquests. I am inclined to think Lingard’s, the nearest to the truth. Evening, read an Article in the North American Review upon Mackintosh which I thought good.4
JQA found Julia Gorham “a very amiable and intelligent young woman” (Diary, 13 Oct.).
On the 12th at the state National Republican convention in Worcester, Levi Lincoln was renominated as the candidate for governor and Samuel Turrell Armstrong of Boston was nominated for the lieutenant-governorship in place of Thomas L. Winthrop, who had declined to run again. Report of the nominations was not carried in the Boston Daily Advertiser & Patriot until the 15th (p. 2, col. 2). On Charles Wells, currently the mayor of Boston, and on his election in 1831 see above, entry for 15 Dec. 1831, and Winsor, Memorial History of Boston
, 3:236. Armstrong was to become mayor in 1835 (same, 3:243).
Returns in from Philadelphia city and county and Delaware county in the election for governor of Pennsylvania held on the 9th showed majorities for the anti-Jackson candidate (Boston Daily Advertiser & Patriot, 13 Oct., p. 2, col. 6).
A review (unsigned) by A. H. Everett, of Sir James Mackintosh’s A General View of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy,
North Amer. Rev.
, 35:433–472 (Oct. 1832).