John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

68

7. V:30. Received this morning a Note from Lord Castlereagh, wholoses no time, in informing me of the decision of the Treasury in the case of the Ship Independence at Glasgow, which the Earl of Liverpool had communicated to me more than a week since. Wrote a Dispatch to the Secretary of State N. 54. Went into London, and took with me the Certificates of Stock three Millions of dollars, which were brought to Europe by Mr Boyd, and which by the directions of the Secretary of the Treasury Dallas, are to be returned to the Treasury. Compared the numbers with Smith, and found them right— I also found at the Office a Letter from W. Couling at Carmarthen— He thinks his departure for America will be delayed by the necessity of collecting debts due to him, the principal of which is from the Bishop of St. David’s— He says that the Bishop owes him £549. which ought to have been paid last February, and he now puts him off with what he has heard and read respecting America, its embarrassments, bad faith and hostile spirit towards this Country, and also cavils with him about his bill, because the improvements by which the debt was contracted— I took my Seal at the engraver Silvester’s in the Strand and went to Leslie’s where I sat two hours for my picture, to send to T. B. Johnson— I asked Leslie if he could introduce the device of my Seal into the Picture; but he did not incline to it. We left the question however, for future consideration. Just as we finished the sitting, Coll Aspinwall came in, to ask of me a certificate to enable him to receive his pension; he had it already drawn up and I signed it. Returning home I walked from the turn of the road to Gunnersbury— The Ladies came in from their fishing party, a few minutes after me. In the Evening I read to them the 69first Book of the Dunciad, and the first Canto of the Lady of the Lake. The weather has been this day fine, and although cool needed no fire. It was the first evening since the month came in, that we had none—

In the Grecian Mythology, Orpheus is said to have charmed Lions and Tygers, the most ferocious wild Beasts, and to have drawn after him the very trees of the forest and the Rocks of the desert by the harmony of his Lyre. Its power was said to have triumph’d even over the tremendous deities of the infernal regions, over the monster Cerberus, the Furies and Pluto himself. The meaning of this Allegory is explained by Horace De Arte Poetica v. 390. Orpheus was a Legislator whose eloquence charmed the rude and Savage men of his age, to associate together in the State of civil Society. To submit to the salutary restraints of Law, and to unite together in the worship of their Creator— It was the Lyre of Orpheus that civilized Savage Man. It was only in Harmony that the first human political institutions could be founded. After the Death of Orpheus, his Lyre was placed among the Constellations— And there according to the Astronomies of Manilius; still possesses its original charm, constituting by its concords the Music of the Spheres, and drawing by its attraction the whole orb of Heaven around with its own revolution. It is the Application of this Fable, and of this passage of Manilius to the United States, the American political Constellation, that forms the device of the Seal. The following is the passage in Manilius with a translation.

At Lyra deductis per coelum cornibus inter Sidera conspicitur, qua quondam ceperat Orpheus Omne quod attigerat cantu, manesque per ipsos Fecit iter, domuitque infernas carmine leges. Hinc coelestis honos, similisque potentia causae. Tunc silvas et saxa trahens,Nunc Sidera Ducit, Et rapit immensum mundi revolubilis orbem. Manilius Astronomicon 1.322 &c. The Lyre of Orpheus, with erected horns Next in the Sky, the starry world adorns; That Lyre which once with fascinating spell Tam’d the dread Lord, and tyrant Laws of Hell. With soft compulsion won the Master’s way From Death’s dire regions to the realms of day. Nor yet, transferr’d in glory to the skies, Has lost the power to draw, by kindred ties. Then Rocks and Groves, obeyed its magic force; Now, of the Starry Orbs, it leads the course; Extends its charm, to Heaven’s remotest bound, And rolling, whirls the Universe around.

The modern Astronomers have connected a Vulture with the Constellation of the Lyre, and it is marked upon the Charts of Bode’s Uranographia, by the name of Vultur et Lyra. Instead of that bird, by a slight poetical license I have assumed the American Eagle as the bearer of the Lyre. The thirteen original Stars form a border round the Seal. The Stars marked upon the Lyre and on the wings of the Eagle are placed in the relative positions, as they may be seen by the naked eye in the Constellation of Lyra. The motto from Manilius is upon the Lyre itself. The moral application of the emblem is, that the same power of harmony which originally produced the institutions of civil government to regulate the Association of individual men, now presides in the federal association of the American States— That Harmony is the Soul of their combination. That their force consists in their Union; and that while thus United, it will be their destiny to revolve in harmony with the whole world by the attractive influence of their Union— It is the Lyre of Orpheus that now leads the Stars, as it originally drew after it rocks and trees. It is harmony that now binds in its influence the American States, as it originally drew individual men from the solitude of Nature, to the assemblages which formed States and Nations.— The Lesson of the emblem is Union.