I remained absent from town again all day, though I can hardly say that I have a sufficiently good account to give of my time to compensate it. My morning was spent partly in the garden, partly in reading. Finished the first volume of Chateaubriand’s Etudes Historiques. It is after all nothing but a skeleton. Mere annals so dry that I do not wonder at his saying in his Preface, nobody would read the book.

Afternoon, I continued the work of pasting in labels into the smaller volumes, occasionally dipping into them—Among others, the works of Crebillon the younger.1 A French Writer who has done his utmost to deprave the imagination of his Countrymen. It is singular how much more of this style there is in French than in English Literature. The morality of France always has been very poor in its quality. But the reigns of Philip the Regent, and Louis the 15th completed the perversion of it. It is to be hoped that among the good effects of the Revolution this will prove one of the greatest. Private morals are the great foundation of a State.

Evening, at Mr. T. Greenleaf’s. A few of the Quincy People. Conversation.