7–13 June 1858

I spent the evening of June 7 at the Ameri- can House, with J. S. Babcock, the carpenter, Mr. Rowse's friend, — a man of much reading, and a very active and independent mind, with an exclusive respect for intellectual power, not much sensibility to morals, though meaning to be fair, and of little hope for the race. The bully, he thinks, is the" great god of the people, and, if Sumner had killed Brooks, he thought the people would have worshipped Sumner. Now, all the West despised him. I tried to show him how much the genius of Burke was indebted to his affection ; what insight good-will gives, and what eyewaters all the virtues are, as humility, love, courage, etc., and what a blindman's-buff self-conceit makes. And he was candid enough. I told him, that whatever was dreary and repels is not power, but the lack of power, — which he allowed. He struggled hard for Webster, who is his idol. He thought the masses admire Gush- ing, Burlingame, Wise, or any man who has done the feat, — who has succeeded. His opin- ions on books, which he has read a good deal, were his own, and just.