Letter of recommendation for Amos Main from Joseph Moodey to Nathan Prince, 1725 July 2

Handwritten letter sent by Joseph Moody, schoolmaster in York, to Harvard Tutor Nathan Prince recommending student Amos Main for acceptance to the College. In the letter, Moody requests Prince give Main an examination for admission, with the caveat that though Main has been studying Latin and Greek he has a difficult home life and is "somewhat Raw; yet I hope you'l wink at it." The letter, dated July 2, 1725, is written on a folded folio-sized leaf; there are handwritten notes about Massachusetts towns on the verso.

Diary of Elias Mann, 1796-1800

Elias Mann kept this diary during his undergraduate years at Harvard College. The diary begins August 17, 1796 and ends in August of 1800 and also includes several undated sheets filled with excerpts of poems. The daily entries describe many aspects of Mann's life, including not only his experiences at Harvard but also his involvement in the larger community. Entries related to life at Harvard describe club meetings (coffee club, Hasty Pudding Club and Phi Beta Kappa); trips to the theater; dinners at taverns; games and recreation, including a card game called "Loo," cribbage, backgammon, bowling, playing ball, fishing, skating and going for sleigh rides; gathering, and sometimes taking from others' gardens, food (most often plums, peaches, nuts and apples); what he ate (including one breakfast of three raw eggs and two glasses of wine); what he read (including Tristram Shandy and one of "Mrs. Ratcliffe's novels"); his friends, often mentioned by name; and academic work and formalities. In one entry he mentions the theft of several possessions from his room, and there are several entries about trips to Fresh Pond.

Sermon notes compiled by Solomon Prentice, 1724-1726

Leather top-bound volume containing notes kept by Solomon Prentice on sermons he attended between April 1724 and December 17, 1726, while he was an undergraduate at Harvard College. The volume contains one-to-two page entries on specific sermons and provides the biblical text and related questions and conclusions.

Letters from Daniel Bates to William Jenks, May 1795-September 1798

Daniel Bates wrote these five letters to his friend and classmate, William Jenks, between May 1795 and September 1798. In a letter written May 12, 1795, Bates informs Jenks, who was then employed as an usher at Mr. Webb's school, of his studies of Euclid, the meeting of several undergraduate societies, and various sightings of birds, gardens and trees. In a letter written in November 1795 from Princeton, where he was apparently on vacation with the family of classmate Leonard Jarvis, he describes playing the game "break the Pope's neck" and tells Jenks what he was reading (Nicholson, Paley?, and Thompson) and what his friend's father was reading (Mirabeau and Neckar).

Letters from John Hubbard Church to William Jenks, 1795-1798

John Hubbard Church wrote these twelve letters to his friend and classmate William Jenks between 1795 and 1798. Church wrote the letters from Boston, Rutland, Cambridge, and Chatham in Massachusetts and from Somers, Connecticut; they were sent to Jenks in Cambridge and Boston, where for a time he worked as an usher in Mr. Vinall's school and Mr. Webb's school. Church's letters touch on various subjects, ranging from his increased interest in theology and his theological studies under Charles Backus to his seasickness during a sailing voyage to Cape Cod. Church also informs Jenks of what he is reading, including works by John Locke, P. Brydone, James Beattie, John Gillies, Plutarch, and Alexander Pope. He describes his work teaching that children of the Sears family in Chatham, Massachusetts, where he appears to have spent a significant amount of time between 1795 and 1797. Church's letters are at times very personal, and he often expresses great affection for Jenks and their friendship.

Letters from Benjamin Welles to John Henry Tudor, 1799-1801

Benjamin Welles wrote these six letters to his friend and classmate, John Henry Tudor, between 1799 and 1801. Four of the letters are dated, and the dates of the other two can be deduced from their contents. Welles wrote Tudor four times in September 1799, at the onset of their senior year at Harvard, in an attempt to clear up hurt feelings and false rumors that he believed had caused a chill in their friendship. The cause of the rift is never fully explained, though Welles alludes to "a viper" and "villainous hypocrite" who apparently spread rumors and fueled discord between the two friends. In one letter, Welles asserts that "College is a rascal's Elysium - or the feeling man's hell." In another he writes: "College, Tudor, is a furnace to the phlegmatic, & a Greenland to thee feeling man; it has an atmosphere which breathes contagion to the soul [...] Villains fatten here. College is the embryo of hell." Whatever their discord, the wounds were apparently eventually healed; in a letter written June 26, 1800, Welles writes to ask Tudor about his impending speech at Commencement exercises. In an October 29, 1801 letter, Welles writes to Tudor in Philadelphia (where he appears to have traveled in attempts to recover his failing health) and expresses strong wishes for his friend's recovery and return to Boston. This letter also contains news of their classmate Washington Allston's meeting with painters Henry Fuseli and Benjamin West.

Papers of David Sewall, 1753-1756

Three letters written to David Sewall (Harvard AB 1755). The first letter, written on September 21, 1753 by Samuel Sewall in York, to his brother at Harvard sends general news, asks after a hat sent to David, and requests he have a wig made for him. The second letter, written by Harvard student David Wyer on August 28, 1756, enthusiastically thanks Sewall for his past advice. The third letter, also sent from his brother Samuel in York on December 9, 1766, offers David advice on love. The two later letters were sent to Sewall while he was a schoolmaster in Wells, Maine.

Notification from William Cutler to the selectmen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that Dr. Philip Brukowitz and wife were inhabiting his father's house in Cambridge, 1758 April 25

Single page notification addressed to the selectmen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, dated 25 April 1758, in which William Cutler writes that he took into his father’s Cambridge house as tenants Dr. George Philip Brukowitz and his wife, from Woburn, Massachusetts. After the Boston smallpox epidemic of 1721, the town of Cambridge enacted a requirement in 1723 that no resident would receive or admit any non-resident family into their homes for the space of a month without informing the town selectmen. The penalty for failing to do so was twenty shillings.

A happy half-century, and other essays /

Partly reprinted from various periodicals.

Nineteenth century teachers and other essays,

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.--Frederick Denison Maurice.--Thomas Erskine of Linlathen.--Life of Charles Kingsley.--Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.--The Cambridge apostles of 1830.--Richard Holt Hutton.--A study of Carlyle.--The majority.--James Fitzjames Stephen.--The moral influence of George Eliot.--John Ruskin.--Laurence Oliphant.--Count Leo Tolstoi.--Morals and politics.--Ethics and science.--Biography.--The relation of memory to will.--The vanity of men of letters.--Invalids.--Apologies.--Henry Thomas Buckle.--The unfaithful steward.--Brothers, an address to female students.--De senectute.--The drawbacks of the intellectual life.

History of intellectual development : on the lines of modern evolution /

v. 1. Greek and Hindoo thought; Graeco-Roman paganism; Judaism; and the closing of the schools of Athens by Justinian (1912) --v.3. Political; Educational; Social; including an attempted reconstruction of the politics of England, France and America for the twentieth century (1901).

Alcipe, Nathercia e Tirse: Considerações sobre as luzes no feminino no Portugal de setecentos

O presente artigo desenvolve-se em torno de três damas esclarecidas da sociedade portuguesa de setecentos: D. Leonor de Almeida (1750-1839), ou Alcipe; D. Catarina de Lencastre (1749-1824), ou Nathercia; e D. Teresa de Mello Breyner (1739-1798?), ou Tirse. Sabendo que o século XVIII foi um período marcado por mudança e controvérsia, pela emergência de novos paradigmas, pelo reequacionamento de estruturas mentais e tradições seculares – ainda que em Portugal se experimentasse uma certa resistência às teorias filosóficas emergentes – a questão que lançamos e procuramos analisar é: qual o reflexo destas transformações no universo feminino? Assim, partindo dos três exemplos referidos e a eles tornando, pretendemos problematizar três questões centrais no discurso iluminista – educação, leituras e viagens – observando como estas matérias, assaz discutidas e teorizadas ao longo do século XVIII, se repercutiram na formação feminina em solo português e, por outro lado, analisar o modesto mas expressivo papel que as referidas damas assumiram na propagação da cultura das luzes em Portugal.

Sovereignty and power relations in the thought of Marsilius of Padua and William of Ockham a comparison.

pp. 229-253

Censura gubernativa, Iglesia e inquisición en el siglo XVIII

Government censorship in Eighteenth Century Spain was another means of the Spanish Enlightenment policy. Until mid-century both powers of Church and State were balanced, from Charles III’s reign on the censorship of the Consejo de Castilla tried to control and restrict not only the traditional power of the Inquisition, but also the intellectual output of the country, either ideological -criticism on the Crown’s policy- or cultural-publishing religious Works. It is important to notice that many members of the elergy collaborated with the State in that task; and also that, after the French Revolution, the Inquisition regained its previous role. In the last decade of the Seventeenth century the irreconcilable clash between the advocates and the critics of the Inquisition became evident