Randolph's library

An account of John Randolph's library, sometime after its scattering to the winds, as remembered by Hugh Grigsby in the February 1854 Southern Literary Messenger.

Seven quick takes

• It's payday! Which means... it's grocery day! So maybe tomorrow I can make pizzas for supper. Can't today because we have no tomatoes - whole, canned, diced or pasted - for a tomato sauce, and no butter & Permesan for an alfredo sauce.
• 4yo Quinta has been banned to my office for excessive screaming and crying.
• 7yo Tertius wore his new Cub Scout uniform shirt to scouts last night, and got his Bobcat badge. Like 12yo Primus, he looks spiffy in his scout uniform. We have good-looking kids (of course).
• She's progressed to steady quiet whining.
• My favorite blanket used to be "Old Scratchy", made of a material that irritates my wife but is preternaturally warm, even when the material itself is cold. I've left Old Scratchy for a down comforter and now Harry the cat has adopted it.
• If it weren't for Aldi's we'd be sunk.
• 12yo Primus consistently produces whoopee-cushion-quality farts. Maybe he can get a high-paying job in Hollywood as a foley artist.

Patristic homilies for Sundays and feasts

Vide. Gregory the Great, Jerome, Bede, Ambrose, Augustine, Leo, Gregory Nazianzus, Hilary, Chrysostom, Chrysologus.

A young boy's books

John Randolph, born in 1773, described his boyhood reading:

One of the first books I ever read was Voltaire's Charles XII.; about the same time, 1780-1, I read the Spectator; and used to steal away to the closet containing them. The letters from his correspondents were my favorites. I read Humphrey Clinker, also; that is Win's and Tabby's letters, with great delight, for I could spell at that age, pretty correctly. Reynard, the Fox, came next, I think; then tales of the Genii and Arabian Nights. This last, and Shakespeare, were my idols. I had read them with Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, Pope's Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's Seasons, before I was eleven years; also, Goldsmith's Roman History, 2 vols., 8 vo., and an old history of Braddock's war.

From an 1819 letter to a young relative which is signed, I have scribbled at a great rate. Do thou likewise.

Butler's Lives: October 14

• St Callixtus, or Callistus, Pope, Martyr
• St Donatian, Confessor
• St Burckard, Confessor, First Bishop of Wurtzburg
• St Dominic, surnamed Loricatus, Confessor

In Congress, December 2, 1799

Twenty-six-year-old John Randolph, representative from Virginia, first takes his seat in Congress at Philadelphia. William Plumer of New Hampshire described him in 1803:

Mr. Randolph goes to the House booted and spurred, with his whip in hand, in imitation, it is said, of members of the British Parliament. He is a very slight man but of the common stature. At a little distance, he does not appear older than you are; but, upon a nearer approach, you perceive his wrinkles and grey hairs. He is, I believe, about thirty. He is a descendant in the right line from the celebrated Indian Princess, Pochahontas. The Federalists ridicule and affect to despise him; but a despised foe often proves a dangerous enemy. His talents are certainly far above mediocrity. As a popular speaker, he is not inferior to any man in the House. I admire his ingenuity and address; but I dislike his politics.

William Henry Harrison, also 26, a new representative from the territory northwest of the Ohio River, arrived late that day and was sworn in after the other representatives.

Beveridge's John Marshall

Albert Beveridge's four-volume biography of John Marshall is available at the Internet Archive. Russell Kirk says Beveridge writes well about many aspects of rural Virginia life from 1755 to 1835.

• Volume 1: Frontiersman, Soldier, Lawmaker: 1755-1788
• Volume 2: Politician, Diplomatist, Statesman: 1789-1801
• Volume 3: Conflict and Construction: 1900-1815
• Volume 4: The Building of the Nation: 1815-1835

Butler's Lives: October 13

• St Edward, King and Confessor
• Ss Faustus, Januarius and Martialis, Martyrs
• Seven Friar Minors, Martyrs
• St Colman, Martyr
• St Gerald, Count of Aurillac, or Orilhac, Confessor

Get your laws off our sacraments

Just something I stumbled across in my archives from 2003:

I don't think government should claim any authority over marriage, which is not only a sacrament but an integral part of the natural law, which precedes and supercedes any claims of government. The government has no more right to define the nature of marriage than it has to define the nature of, say, the Eucharist.

Give the government that power [to regulate marriage], and soon enough it will attempt to define the nature of the Eucharist; it will define our prayers and worship as child abuse, our Scriptures as hate speech, our acts of charity as crimes against humanity, and so on.

Augustine's letter to Proba

The 1950s CUA translation is online, along with the nearly-complete collection of Augustine's letters.

• Letter 130, to Proba
• Letters Vol 2 (83-130)
• Letters Vol 3 (131-164)
• Letters Vol 4 (204-270)

Kirk's "Randolph of Roanoke"

Online! Nearly every day I'm astounded at what can be found at the Internet Archive. Today's astonishment was occasioned by the discovery of Russell Kirk's Randolph of Roanoke: A Study in Conservative Thought - intact, complete and free in a variety of formats.

I loves me the internet.