- Beale George W.
A dull, cold, cloudy day, without rain, most busily occupied, with no
other efficient action than a walk before dinner; with Mr Crane
up the hill of Charles’s house
Charles himself was gone to Boston, but returned home to dine— We saw
his wife, and Mr Crane admired the prospect of the
harbour—the islands, the city, the village, and the western hills. My
garden and Nursery rambles are barren and my meditations teeming but as
yet unfruitful— I cannot do the writing and the reading of my daily task
in one day—one of them is and must be sacrificed to the other I read
this morning Mr
Bacon in praise of knowledge, and began his Valerius
Terminus or the Interpretation of Nature; with the Annotations of Hermes
Stella— A few fragments of the first book— And then there is a Note,
that none of the annotations of Stella are set down in these fragments—
Of all this title there is no explanation— Valerius Terminus and Hermes
Stella with annotations, not set down must explain themselves— I see
nothing but fragments of the first book of an immense imaginary work
upon the interpretation of Nature—extremely curious—but profoundly to be
studied—22 quarto pages. I intended to have them for this mornings
portion, but before I had got half through came the daily mail and
newspapers; and in the Boston Courier of this Morning the address of
John Tyler to his friends
throughout the Union, withdrawing his name from the canvas, as a
candidate for election of President— To this step he has been driven, by
a deputation of Democrats from New York; disclosing to him that cannot
get up an electoral ticket; to vote for him in any one State in the
Union— His address is a Captain
Bobadil brag of the prosperity of the Country all the
merit of which he claims as due to his administration, and a viperous
string of invective against Henry
Clay, Chancellor Kent,
Thomas H. Benton and me— The
dirtiest of his spite is vented upon me. He is perhaps too low for
further notice from me, but as the tool of others hate his address is
not to be overlooked or despised— I have come in my own address to my
constituents to the point of my own vindication, and the exposure of the
base Jackson and Erving plot against me, which it will
require all my energy and more than all my discretion to manage— A
falser and fouler conspiracy never debased the character of man than
this— To show it in all its turpitude to the world is my duty to the
world and to my self— I have the power and the means—the transcendent
difficulty is to do it with calmness and composure, and without an
unbecoming manifestation of temper— Medio tutissimus ibis— Not the
tameness of a nameless victim, not the tempest that loses self command.
Oh! for a curb upon my temper!— I am still also labouring through,
Macaulays characteristics
of Horace Walpole, and his father— Charles and his wife, and
Mr
Beale spent the evening with us