Morning clear, and weather exceedingly warm. I went to town as usual preparatory to going to Medford for a week, as my Wife wished to see her Sister. At the Office where my time was taken up in reading the Criminal Trials of all ages and Countries.1 A work got up with a good deal of judgment and success. It gives to be sure a very melancholy picture of the depravity of man, but perhaps it is not without a valuable practical moral in it. At noon, or a little after, I left town accompanied by Mr. Brooks.

Arrived at Medford and found my Wife and Child had reached there. Wasted the Afternoon excepting insofar as I read a part of the first division of Absalom and Achitophel by Dryden with Sir W. Scott’s Notes.2 These latter though decidedly party compositions yet do much to elucidate passages time has made difficult to understand.

Evening, I went down to Mrs. Angier’s with Mr. and Mrs. Frothingham and my Wife. Some Company there. And singing, some of which was quite good. Returned a little after nine o’clock; a thunder shower took place which lasted some hours.