Fine day. I remained quietly at home. My time was divided between Thucydides and Sydney in the morning. I read in the former the account of the plague of Athens, which has a peculiar interest at this time from the fact of their being such a thing now in the Country. There is no similarity at all in the symptoms of the two. The old plague seems to have been a fever arising from an overcrowded and ill settled population, this spreads in City and Country through three quarters of the habitable globe. In New York it continues with rather increased virulence, though on the whole it has as yet been tolerably confined in it’s operations there.

Afternoon, I concluded for want of more attractive occupation to 332resume Seneca, so that I took up the second Volume and the Treatise upon Clemency in a Prince. It was addressed to Nero.

I took a drive with my Wife, and we went through Milton round the factories passing a house which certainly has a very imposing appearance. It is an old house lately repaired and much improved. Mr. Greenleaf very politely handed me a Newspaper which contained some late and important news from Europe. The French seem to be again in a state of commotion.1 Mr. Beale and his daughter called in the evening.