The weather grows slightly cooler but still uncommonly mild. I went to the Office. My time principally occupied in writing No. 2 of my Newspaper talk. I am foolish enough to follow this ridiculous business when I never produced any effect by it. The Newspaper in which I publish is not circulated widely nor is it a popular paper yet as things are here I can easily publish in no other. I am a sort of solitary among parties here embracing none. And the situation of my father in relation to them also affects me.

Walk. Nothing material. Home but omitted Ovid, there being company to dinner. Edward and P. C. Brooks Jr. with Mr. Frothingham. Tolerably pleasant. Nothing however of any consequence. But the afternoon was very much consumed.

Purchased the other day at a shop for a trifle Clarendon’s Essays,1 and I am reading a few of them, but I think they are not equal to the reputation of the Author. His style is heavy and lumbering for this sort of thing. It may do for a history because now and then it rises up to eloquence and flow. Evening quietly at home. Read a little of D’Israeli’s third Volume. This and the second are not equal to the first volume but yet there is something exceedingly interesting in the information he has managed to put into the articles. His knowledge is evidently superficial and yet he must have a great deal of that. I have not attended to my German so closely since I began Götz von Berlichingen, owing to the greater difficulty of the Text. But I will remedy that.