A thorough April day with alternate shower and sunshine. After reading Schiller for some time I went to the Office where I was occupied in writing a reply to my father’s last letters. I should like very well to see all the underplot of that business although I have no regret at the result. My Letter was long and contained much that was not prudent to commit to the Mail.1 But do we always listen to prudence? Not I certainly.

Short walk in which I seized the opportunity to collect some Dividends. Home. Read Wilhelm Meister. Afternoon, continued and read through the third Volume of Marmontel in which he arrives at the period of the French Revolution and his tone immediately and naturally becomes much more grave. What a period for men like him living upon salaried Institutions. Others could save Property and have a hope of Indemnity. But the places were irrevocably lost. In the evening Coleridge’s Poetry and Wilhelm Meister.