An exceedingly warm morning, but in the Afternoon we had light showers and before night the wind changed until it became really 91cold—One of the extraordinary variations of our Climate. I read a good deal of the Letters of Madame de Sevignè.1 A brisk letter writer, but rather coarse. This was the fashion of the age. We have changed all that. Our day is a pure par excellence.2 We admit no bad words, or ideas.

Attended divine Service. Two Sermons from Mr. Whitney, I. John 1.46. and I Corinthians 14.40—The last upon propriety of behaviour and the decencies of life.

Read a Sermon of Massillon’s being the last of the Mysteries, upon the visitation of Mary. Text. Luke 1.39. “And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste into a city of Judea.” He considers this conduct of Mary as furnishing an excellent moral for our day. 1. In her Superiority to worldly proprieties and judgments 2. in her contempt of hardship and difficulty 3. in her thoroughness. These he considers as the obstacles which self love most successfully raises against man’s progress in grace. The last he treats by considering that class of persons who wish to unite their duties to God and to the world. I confess I do not see the strength of his reasoning. I am of the latter class, so far as to say that God made us mortals to perform duties in this world and duties which require time and attention.

Mr. and Miss Beale passed an hour. Read Sevigné. I have done the Connoisseur, and from my engagements was unable to get at my house the Observer.3 As a consequence I intermit two days. The Connoisseur is decidedly at the bottom of the Essayists, I have yet read.