- Pakenham Richard
- M’Tavish. J
- Woodward D
rEbenezer
I took at last to the Bookbinders the Miscellanies of my own composition
heretofore published in 8vo. and smaller
form, chronologically assorted to be bound in five volumes to be given
as a bequest in advance to my
Son— Of several of them there is perhaps no other copy now
extant— They are all so little estimated by the world that no other
collection of them will ever probably ever
be made— Whether any value will be set upon them by my own descendents
for whose benefit, I have gathered this compilation is more than I can
foresee— Some of them have had a temporary popularity— But Volumes have
been published of the Speeches of Daniel
Webster, of Edward
Everett and of Henry
Clay.— No such collection has ever been published, of
mine— They have therefore never taken hold of the public mind so as to
leave a demand for them after the occasions which produced them have
passed away.— Their popularity has been evanescent, and I have no right
to hope that they will ever emerge from that class of literary labours,
which like Thorold’s Lord
Mayor’s day—“lived in Settles numbers one day more.” That they may live
in the Memory of my own posterity somewhat longer, I have resorted to
this expedient of leaving these volumes as a memorial to my Son. With
him and with his children it remains to prolong my existence in
Memory, when I shall be here no more.— I received this morning from the
author, a pamphlet of 156 pages on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery,
by Lysander Spooner— A man
with whom I have already had some not very pleasant relations, and who
in pursuing principles to their extreme consequences, heeds not of whom
or of what he runs foul. I have also received half a dozen copies of the
annual address delivered before the Cincinnati Astronomical Society.
June 1845. with the Reports of the Board of Control, and of the Director
of the Observatory (Professor
Mitchell.)— I read the Address by E. D. Mansfield Esqr. with great pleasure— Its views of the
usefulness of Astronomical Science, and observatories are in many
respects new, and specially applicable to our western States, to the
surveys and admeasurements of the public Lands, and to the political
condition and history past and future of our western States— In reading
it, and the Reports of the board of Control, and of Professor Mitchell,
the question occurred to me whether I could not from these materials
elicit some pregnant ideas, for the organization of the Astronomical
Observatory at Harvard University, and for a final Report to the House
of Representatives of the United States upon the Smithsonian bequest?
Let me not forget these suggestions.— Mr Gill the bookbinder was at
Boston— I left the directions for binding with his shop-boy— While I was
out I missed the visits of Mr Pakenham the British
Minister, and of Mr M’Tavish the British Consul at Baltimore. They
came out from Boston, and waited some time for my return— They have been
some days at Boston, and were to leave this afternoon for Niagara.