536 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
unfavorably compared with the other children, and repeatedly put 
under severe disciplinarians as tutors. Eventually his father had 
him imprisoned more than once. In the face of this persecution, 
Mirabeau, helped partly by the affectionate interest of an uncle, suc- 
ceeded nevertheless in developing an extraordinarily winning manner 
in speech and personal contacts, even charming his jailers into relaxing 
their punishments. Whether or not he was inclined to solitude, it was 
forced on him by his father; much of his learning and literary produc- 
tion took place in prisons or their equivalents. He was highly erotic, 
and may have had sexual relations with his younger sister; for so he 
asserts. 
Adams regarded even his name, John Quincy, which was his great- 
grandfather’s, as a perpetual admonition to live nobly. The Revolu- 
tionary War and the Battle of Bunker Hill, which he witnessed, con- 
firmed a serious habit of mind from early childhood. As his father 
was absent from home a great deal, he was already as a small boy 
depended upon by his mother as if he were a man. His education 
commenced at home under a tutor, and continued in Europe in the 
company of his father and other men notable in the governmental 
service. It was not until he entered Harvard that he attended a regu- 
lar school for any length of time. Both his mother and his father 
tried to keep him from the corrupting influence of other boys, and it is 
evident from the nature of his life that his chief contacts were with 
grown men of serious and intellectual character. He read a great deal 
under the guidance of his father, whom in his earliest letters he ob- 
viously wished to please. 
Wieland was educated at home under the eyes of his father, a pastor, 
in somewhat the same severe manner as was Goethe. He studied hard 
from 3 years of age. He says of his childhood: “I was deeply in love 
with solitude and passed whole days and summer nights in the garden, 
observing and imitating the beauties of nature” [26, p. 19]. He was 
much more attached to books than to people. Prior to age 17, says 
his biographer, “We encounter not a single friend of his own age, only 
books and those who helped with them!” [26, p. 24]. He was sensi- 
tive and unsociable when away at school, and when he returned home 
he lived alone or associated only with older men. His biographer 
makes no mention of his relations with his several siblings. 
Tasso, whose old father was often compelled to be away from home, 
lived with his young mother and his sister until he was separated from 
them forever at 10, to join his father at the court of his patron prince. 
Even while he remained at home he was being strictly educated, first by 
an old priest, and then in a Jesuit school, which he loved. His mother, 
of whom he was passionately fond, died 2 years after he went to join 
his father. Of his childhood, Boulting says: “The prolonged absences 
of his father, the tears of his mother, the straitened circumstances and 
this sudden death were not healthy influences for a sensitive lad, and 
