Upon opening our eyes this morning, we found a most tremendous flurry blowing hail and rain and snow together, and lasting only a few minutes after a Clap of thunder. The atmosphere afterwards became decidedly more chilly. I went to the Office but my time was wasted even more than usual. This is a melancholy state of things from which something must come soon to relieve me or I shall become a drone. Several persons called to see me upon various matters of business and I went to the Athenaeum afterwards where I wasted the time when I should have walked. The neglect of exercise in my present condition 183is as bad as the neglect of study, for it makes the latter less likely to be performed when greater occasion may call for it.

Afternoon, finished the 5th book De Finibus, which is on the whole an interesting Dissertation though it settles nothing. I completed my Copy of the letter to my Father and sent it.

Evening. Read to my Wife a part of the Romance of the Italian which Mr. Alston’s Picture has brought up again.1 I am rather inclined to think the world has lost nothing by allowing these books to sleep on the shelves of Circulating Libraries in Peace. They consult2 Passions and terrors which are hardly beneficial to man. I continued a sketch for future use which I think I mentioned as begun a few nights since and read the Spectator.