17 June 1835
adams-john10 Neal Millikan Press
17

17. V. Wednesday.

Mrs Hannah Miller Mrs Edward Miller Miss Hannah Miller Durand A. B. Adams Charles F Davis Thomas

A distant salute of 24 guns at Sunrise, announced this as the Bunker hill anniversary, and roused me half an hour later than the proper time from my bed. My visit to the garden was short and at ten O’Clock, Mr Durand came. He continued painting the Portrait of my Grandchild Fanny, and began upon that of Mary-Louisa— He told me that Mr Allen, the Son in Law of Mr Read, after returning with him to New-York had come back to Boston, to purchase for him some Shells, of which Mr Read is making a collection.— Mr Durand dined with us, and returned immediately after dinner to Boston— My Son Charles came out with Mr Thomas Davis and took tea with us, and returned in the Evening— Charles left with me numbers 1 and 2. of his Papers signed a Whig of the Old School, which are to be published in the Boston Centinel— He has commenced as a writer of political controversy, and has published in the Boston Advocate, a series of nine numbers of Political Speculation, under the signature of a Whig Antimason— They have already drawn considerable public attention, and these papers when published in the Centinel, will draw much more— The undertaking is perilous; for it is to counteract a prevailing torrent of popular opinion, in the place where he resides— But he has the cause of Truth, of Justice and of the Constitution— Mr Davis asked me, if there 18was in any of the Latin Poets such a line as Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis— I said surely there was, in Ovid; and I repeated the line Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies as immediately succeeding it— But upon consulting the Book, I found the lines “Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,

Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies”— Fasti 6.770.

the first of which lines expresses the same sentiment, but in far more poetical language, and beautiful imagery— Where the other line originated— Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis, I cannot recollect, nor where I read it—though it has been long familiar to my Memory— I paid an Evening visit to Mr Daniel Greenleaf.

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