A part of the morning was devoted to Marketing so that after writing my Journal and the usual duties at the Office I had not a great deal of time to devote to writing a letter to my father as I contemplated. I succeeded however in finishing more than one half of it. My letter writing comes much easier than it formerly did so that now my great difficulty is to compress enough. This is the trying part of style and the one which makes the happy medium between obscurity and weakness.

Returned home and passed the afternoon in reading and reviewing the first Oration against Verres. It has great points. Cicero was a great master of address. He knew how to touch the Audience he was talking to and to threaten, court, or despise exactly as it suited him. Is this an art or does it come from nature. Probably the latter heightened and improved by the former. Tact is not with some men, with others, it does more than great genius. He manages the Judges here with great dexterity.

In the evening I attended the Meeting of the Debating Society and heard a discussion upon the subject of Lyceums and their expediency which was very amusing though hardly instructive. The tone of argument there is rather low. We are not Men accustomed to argue unless we are made to. And the mind is always ready to fly off in a tangent upon the least opportunity. Quincy however who cultivates the ironical vein was quite happy this evening. Returned with the Wind piercing cold. I read a little of Buffon and the Tatler.