Morning clear and pleasant. Took a ride with my Wife and lengthened it considerably as I found her better able to bear it. But it brought me to the Office very late and I had no morning. Mr. Rupp the Clerk of the Boylston Market called and I spoke of the proceedings of yesterday, and doubted the expediency of so large a Dividend, as they decided upon.1 I afterwards said the same thing to Mr. Child whom I met.2 Mr. Rupp gave me one or two desperate debts to collect for the Company which I promised to do with as well as I could. 130The rest of the time was passed in running about town, and finally in going for a book to the Athenaeum.

I have concluded to go back to Cicero and consequently began the Letters to Atticus this Afternoon. It is hard that so great a man should rarely be free from suspicion. Guthrie the translator even denies him credit in the famous Conspiracy of Catiline, and intimates that he made full as much of it as it would bear.3 The idea has certainly crossed my mind when considering the apparent power enjoyed by the enemies of Cicero when accusing him upon this matter, yet on the whole I am led to think it unfounded. Summary punishment was and is a very unpopular, though occasionally a just measure—And we have the evidence of an Enemy, Sallust, besides. Read Bacon’s Essay upon Travel, Fenelon, Boileau’s Longinus and the Spectator, besides translating a page of Cicero, de optimo genere Oratorum.