Here we are again at the equal days and nights. How time passes and how we all pass with it—A remark of no great novelty but which will never cease to be interesting to the maker at every repetition. I went to the Office and was engaged in writing Accounts and so forth. Read part of Rousseau’s Inequality of man over again1 for the purpose of mastering his theory. In these days, there is so much of wild doctrine afloat, it is well to be acquainted with the principal sources of it.

Walk. The Accounts from Florida are so alarming this morning that I do not like much to dwell upon them. Home, Livy. Afternoon, Niebuhr with whom I became so tired as to give him up, d’Israeli’s Literary Character which I finished at severe cost to my eyes, and de la Motte Fouqué. Evening, Madame Junot and Swift. I mean now for a few weeks to luxuriate in literary idleness.