Morning at the Office. Weather very backward for the Season. I went to the Office and was much occupied in accounts—Sundry persons coming in to pay rent due. I finished the letter to my father and sent with it my Quarterly Account which I had been keeping back.1 It took me much of the afternoon to copy it. Walk and home to read Livy.

My father is confined to the house for a week and appears to be generally unwell. His mode of life is peculiarly trying to his constitution. I do not know, but it seems to me that his situation presents very little of the dignified or the agreeable in it. My imagination pictures old age as seated at home in the midst of social connexions and quiet enjoyments. But in this Country there is vastly little of this. Men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.

My progress in Livy is slow but it is agreeable. Read a little of Fouqué, in whose book I get on too slowly. Quiet evening at home—Read Madame Junot, in the eighth volume which is the record of Napoleon’s decline, Swift’s Examiner.