Goethe is considered by Germans as the head of all their literature. He has for a long time past carried away with him the suffrages of all, and this must be admitted to show a great degree of power. But when I look for it in Werther I do not see it. To be sure it is a very natural 29picture of a particularly morbid condition of the human frame and might answer particularly well for the study of a physician. But there is not a single healthy view of human life, hardly a single sound general principle in the book. And I cannot enjoy much a book which has neither of these.

Office. Writing and Accounts. I devote myself almost exclusively to my Diary. But I took my walk and called upon Mr. Sharpe by request of Mr. Brooks as also upon Clark to pay him for a marble mosaic table I have induced him to get, which Sharpe is setting.1

Home where I read part of the eighth book of the Metamorphoses. Afternoon, pursuing my examination of the Official papers. They contain little or nothing of a very interesting character for they give results without showing the mode in which these were reached. Pickering shows his character more than any of the Officers. The same stubborn, opinionated man that he always was.2 Evening, my Wife being alone, I read aloud part of Miss Austen’s Novel of Mansfield Park, after which German in my study.