I began this morning Goethe’s dramatic Poem of Torquato Tasso, a subject which is treated by Lord Byron but which I never greatly admired. I was engaged a considerable part of the morning at my house superintending the work that is going on there. When I see what is to be done I grow a little discouraged. At my Office engaged in Diary and Accounts, then walk. Called at the house of a Tenant for some rent which I collected, then to see Sharp a cabinet maker about my table, so that on the whole I had no time for writing a letter as I had intended. Home.

Afternoon M. Thiers who is more circumstantial in his Account of the murders which took place in the prisons than any historian I have read. Is there any thing more horrible in all history. Yet this is no hostile author to the principles of the Revolution. Read some supplementary letters of Grimm upon German Literature written long before the Augustan Age had come. Evening, Taylor’s Philip van Artevelde, the first part of which I finished. The interest is sustained.