John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

30. I took a warm Bath this morning before Breakfast— Mr Redwood called on me, still anxious and uncertain concerning the prosecution for a penalty hanging over him, for an importation of prohibited Articles— I wrote another Note upon the subject to Mr: Gourieff the Minister of Finance.— After my Evening walk I read some pages of Jortin’s Remarks upon Ecclesiastical History; which are loaded with a great multiplicity of Greek and Latin Citations, but are very amusing.— Some of them are rather rank, for the subject, and the author, a Clergyman. On the Apostolical Constitutions, the Jewish Sects of Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, and the Sibylline Oracles and verses there is much curious information— Some of the Essenes it says never married because they believed all married women unfaithful— Jortin asks how they could honour their fathers and mothers?— La Harpe has I think a similar observation upon Juvenal’s 6th: Satire— The other day at the Field Marshal’s funeral procession we had this subject discussed between Count Löwenhielm, Count Maistre and the Chevalier Bardaxi— Lowenhielm was remarking the resemblance between Count Maistre and his brother— Bardaxi observed upon it the general resemblance which usually runs through families— Löwenhielm said that when brothers had not the same father this resemblance was very apt to fail, and added that he believed there were few, very few women indeed who did not give their children more than one father— I told him that was only the opinion of a libertine; but as both the other gentlemen fell foul of him, as champions of the sex, I took no further part in the discussion— Löwenhielm had the worst of the argument— But he may have taken his opinion from his own family— He and his brother are supposed to have had two fathers— He bears a very strong and unequivocal resemblance to the nuptial father, my old friend Count Löwenhielm, whom I knew as Swedish Minister at the Hague— His brother has not a feature of that resemblance, and is reputed to be the Son of the present king of Sweden, whom he does resemble. So that it may be his way of honouring his Mother, to consider her frailty as that of the whole sex.