Morning cloudy, with a thick sea fog but no rain. I went to town and was busy much as usual. I had more leisure time and was therefore enabled to read rather more than common. Finished the review of Languet,1 who is an able writer and for his age a genius, though now the same things told in so formal and reasoned a way would make one smile. I began Mably upon Legislation and found him very absurd.2 I begin to think the fault must be in myself who cannot relish these fancies of enthusiastic men. But every system avowedly departing from the leading principles of man’s nature strikes me as Nonsense. The Republic of Lycurgus is always cited as authority for the most hypothetical projects, and moreover as an example. Now to me nothing appears more unnatural, and more undesirable than those very Institutions. Was Man made to fight his Neighbours, or to employ Slaves to keep him in suitable idleness for the purpose? Where is the so much vaunted equality of man? Where is the Law of the Creator that he shall live by the sweat of his brow? Where are all the Qualities that adorn and sweeten life? The gentle affections, the social bonds formed by nature, and only severed by the caprice and art of Man? Let us hear no more then of the Republic of Lycurgus, as an example. An abominable perversion of all natural principles.

Returned home to dine, and passed the afternoon in reading the Oration for Milo, which I finished and began to review. Took a ride with my Mother and Wife. The gentlemen came again and persuaded my father to take the Oration. I am very glad of it. For I like to be saved any trial, about which I have any doubt. And my father is not a preference of which I have any reason to complain as to vanity.

After passing the Evening with the family, I finished it by reading a little of Grimm in which I make slow progress and two Numbers of the Spectator.