Fine morning. I went to town. Time passed at the Athenaeum and office. But I had no business to transact. The Tenants are as slow as ever. I amused an hour in reading a part of a late work of Chateaubriand upon French History.1 He is a Royalist of the Bourbon species. A man now for the second time undergoing an eclipse. A good writer and a sensible man, though imbued with the prejudices peculiar to his caste. I have taken up his book from a curiosity to know how he will treat the history of France in its ancient stages. A remarkable thing is that he says nothing of Sismondi.

Returned to Quincy. Read and finished the fifth book of Seneca discussing whether a father or connection is bound by the act of conferring an obligation upon a son or relative. All this is refining. Worked a little in the Garden.

Evening, read to the ladies some of Dr. Granville’s Journey to St. Petersburgh—A courtly physician.2