Morning at the Office. My time as usual frittered away, for what with one thing and another, I did not sit down to write to my father which was designed to be the business of the morning until too late to finish the letter. Yet the only solid part of the morning to me was the portion occupied in that way.

I then went to the Athenaeum to get a book or two which makes the usual alternation from my morning walks. Thence home where I passed my afternoon in reading over Guthrie’s translations of the two Orations I have read. They are tolerable but not first rate. They show the laborious student but not the powerful genius—The reader of Cicero but not the spirit to grasp him. I was surprised to find how long it took me to read them in English, and could only account for it from the diffuse nature of the English Language when compared to the Latin. I believe now that I am very fully master of those two Orations and shall proceed to the rest with more confidence.

Evening attended for the first time for some weeks the Meeting of the Debating Society. The question the permanency of the Union. I did not intend to take part in it, but I did, and spoke without premeditation, with uncommon fluency. Home late. Read the Tatler.