1. On 4 Nov., JA, in company with JQA, John Jay, William Bingham, and William Vaughan, visited Sir Ashton Lever’s natural history museum, or Holophusikon, and the British Museum. In his later description of his visit to the first, JA noted that he had seen “Sir Ashton and some other knights, his friends, practising the ancient but as I thought long forgotten art of archery.” JQA, in his Diary, provided a more detailed description of the collections at the two museums, noting that while the British Museum’s were “much more extensive,” with regard to natural history “Sir Ashton Lever’s Collection is much more perfect” (JQA, Diary description begins Diary of John Quincy Adams, ed. David Grayson Allen, Robert J. Taylor, and others, Cambridge, 1981– . description ends , 1:199–200; JA, D&A description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 3:151). In a 5 Nov. letter to Peter Jay Munro, JQA expanded on his Diary entry for the previous day, commenting more fully on Lever’s display of “curiosities” collected in the course of Capt. James Cook’s final voyage and the fragments of Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad and the original of the Magna Carta that the party had seen at the British Museum (NNMus).

JA probably refers to a visit to the Josiah Wedgwood showroom in London at Newport Street and St. Martin’s Lane rather than the firm’s manufactory in distant Staffordshire. William Parker manufactured cut-glass ware and lamps at 69 Fleet Street in London. It is not known when JA visited either, but in his later account he noted that he “was not less delighted with the elegance of his [Wedgwood’s] substitute for porcelain, than with his rich collection of utensils and furniture from the ruins of Herculaneum.” With regard to Parker’s “manufactory of cut glass,” he wrote that “it seemed to be the art of transmitting glass into diamonds” (DNB description begins Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, New York and London, 1885–1901; repr. Oxford, 1959–1960; 21 vols. plus supplements. description ends ; A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester, Eng., 1969, repr. edn., N.Y., 1989, p. 264; JA, D&A description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 3:151).