Weather Cold. I should like this Winter as I am now in a condition which will promise something like permanency, to set a Thermometer and record in a general way in this Book the various changes of our Climate.1 There is much that is curious to learn from this and much that remains in the memory to future times. I went to the Office and was hardly interrupted during the whole course of the morning. I began reading Pufendorf’s Devoirs de l’homme et du Citoyen,2 being his own abridgment of his larger work, and in order to exercise my skill in writing I began a translation of the Preface, which I found easy and pleasant. My idea now is to practice writing in all shapes until I get to a state satisfactory to myself, that is a state, when my pen will be a source of confidence. I accomplished five pages, in translation, and read the whole Preface. It put me much in mind of that of Jeremy Taylor, excepting that the one merely draws the lines between Natural Law and Theology, the other bases the latter upon the principles of the former and carries them out.

My morning was satisfactory. Mr. Brooks came in for a single moment to ask me to go to Medford tomorrow to which I acceded. The remainder of the time was usefully passed. After dinner I read for two hours to my Wife instead of the usual time in the evening, in the Story of Clarissa Harlowe. It is too long and minute. Trifles seldom deserve recording excepting in a Journal where they bore only the person interested.3 I read the usual quantity of Aeschines but found him rather harder than usual. I translated all I had done due yesterday and had time for a little of the Philosophy of the Ancients in La Harpe before going to Mrs. Frothingham’s after Abby who had passed the Evening there. I found them much the same and hospitable as ever, for they entertained me with Oysters and other nice things, and then we returned home.