Morning pleasant with a warm Wind. After reading Kotzebue for a sufficient time, I went to the Office as usual and was busy as usual with my regular work after which I read a portion of the “Bibliotheque de L’Homme Public” containing Maxims of Guicciardini which on the whole did not strike me, and a part of An Analysis of the State of 16France by Seigneur du Haillan.1 I was interrupted however by An Applicant for the Transfer of a Share in the Boylston Market, and by some other little bits of business of a trifling character yet seizing time. Took a walk.

After dinner I read the rest of the Oration for Rabirius which is but a fragment, and the first Oration against Catiline. It is a little remarkable that in the first of these two, Cicero contradicts the whole of his doctrine about a future state which he adopts in that for Cluentius. This would make it appear as if he suited his Opinions to the cases he argued, a principle which I cannot quite see the correctness of.

In the evening as Mrs. Dexter had sent in to ask us to spend the evening, My Wife and I feeling refusal to be impossible, paid her a visit. Judge Ward was there.2 She is a singular Woman, but not an unpleasant or an unkind one. Returned home to read Kotzebue and the Spectator.