- Pedrich Ferdinand
- Todsen George
- Taliaferro John
- Cameron George
Continuing the perusal of Mr Johnson’s Treatise upon
Language. I find him in Lecture disclaiming with great earnestness any
intention to unsettle the belief of divine revelation in the holy
Scriptures. So does Benjamin
Constant— So did the Count
de Buffon in his correspondence with the Sorbonne— I
believe Johnson sincere; and he declares emphatically that he never
would have published his Lectures if he had believed his theory
incompatible with faith in divine revelation— Dr.
Johnson supposes that Pope did not know that his optimism in the Essay on Man
was fatalism; and Alexander B. in excluding religious faith from the
conclusions of his own argument assigns no reason for the exception. The
general tenor of his argument is that words have no signification except
as reports of the physical senses— That all knowledge consists of
sights, sounds, feels, tastes and smells—but in his classification he
admits another class of thoughts which he calls verbal; and in another
Lecture he allows internal feelings to be also a source of thoughts— The
words mind, and idea, are totally excluded from his vocabulary— His
broad Theory is that language is and can be significant of nothing but
Sensation— And as this doctrine makes of the universe a mass of
sensuality without Soul, and without reasoning faculty, he runs foul of
natural religion of theism of mathematics of metaphysics—of all art and
all Science, protesting all the time that he means no harm to religion—
Mr Johnson is a remarkable instance of
the misfortune of intense and incessant meditation, destitute of dear
conception— Morning visit from Mr Taliaferro, to whom I gave a
copy of my Eulogy on James
Madison.— Mr Pedrich, and Dr Todsen
came and I went with them to the old Episcopal church at Georgetown,
where I saw his groups of statuary, his busts of Mr Van
Buren, Mr Clay, and Mr Joseph R. Ingersoll and his
designs for Basso Relievo Sculpture in a Church. He was urgent to have
my opinion of his works, and I could not give it for it was not
favourable I could not flatter and was unwilling to discourage him.— His
groups are mere commonplace imitation of the antique— His allegorical
faces very uncaptivating; and his busts no likenesses— It was
unfortunate for him that there were in the same building busts of
Mr
Woodbury, the Secretary and of Mr
Preston the Senator from South-Carolina by Hiram Power of Kentucky, and superior
as likenesses and as works of art to the busts by Mr Pedrich— His designs for Bas Relief
embrace 84 Subjects Half from the old and half from the new Testament—
They are in the Classical Style of Italian Painting, and represent God
almighty in the form of an old man with a hooked nose, a bushy beard
rolled up in thirty or forty yards of blanketing. Then he represents the
Patriarchs Abraham and Isaac in precisely the same form, and in the
same costume— Mr Pedrich has a
recommendation from his master Thorwaldsen certifying that he has considerable talent,
which is unquestionable; but he has not that ideal conception of grace
and beauty which is the perfection of Sculpture and Painting, and
without which the mere imitation of nature, physical nature, is 389fit only for Signposts and Milestones.— On
returning home after a visit to the Bank of the Metropolis, I found at
my door a person named George
Cameron, who exhibited to me drawings of an invention for
guarding the boilers of Steam engines from explosion; for which he said
he had a patent; and he had a petition to the Secretary of the Navy; for the sum
of 300 dollars to make experiments of his invention— He complained that
the Secretary of the Navy had refused him the money, and as I had
neither power nor will to redress that grievance, he said he would lay
his invention, before a Committee of Congress— To this I had no
objection— The man had as Wise said
of Silas Wright a Cognac face. and
he had burnished it before coming here— Just before dinner I received
the proof slips from the National Intelligencer Office of that part of
my Eulogy on Madison which is to be published in the paper to-morrow
Morning— I had corrected it and took the opportunity to rectify an error
in the pamphlet, which stated the numbers of Publius at 86—they were 85—
After dinner it occurred to me to correct another error into which I had
fallen in enumerating the numbers of the federalist written by Mr Madison. I had omitted the numbers 62 and
63— I wrote a note correcting this error, and enclosed it to the Foreman
of the National Intelligencer, with a request that it might be subjoined
to the part of the Eulogy to be published in the daily paper to-morrow—
Mary and Elizabeth spent the Evening at
Mrs W. S. Smith— I went for them and walked home
with them between 9 and 10 O’Clock