Morning clear and cool. Rode to town and passed all the morning as usual in a variety of pursuits. Having written my Journal and been to my House to dress, I walked down to see the progress of Mr. Hollis in covering my father’s houses. Found the three completed, but neither of the sheds even commenced, nor were they working which I noted down, for I have a kind of notion they make me pay for it all. At my return to the Office, I sat down and read my father’s further Chapters upon Turkey, in the Annual Register. His mind is a singular, certainly a powerful one, and though I am often tempted to doubt the correctness of his conclusions, yet I cannot help being struck with the power of his reasoning. Called in to see Mr. Brooks for a moment and found with him his son Edward and Mr. Everett. Talked a minute and then started for Quincy.

After dinner we went on with the Catalogue pretty rapidly, so that before evening we had finished one whole side of compact books. I read a little of Smollett’s History of the last Years of George 2d in order to understand more clearly Horace Walpole’s Memoirs which I propose to read.1 But I always found Smollett very dull as a Historian. He hardly deserves the rank above a mere Annalist. Conversation in the Evening with my father upon Jeremy Bentham and Neal’s Story about Platonic Trinitarianism.2 He did not recollect it. After Supper, a discussion of the South Carolina Doctrines, and the nature of State and governmental Sovereignty.