Morning clear and bright, but a sharp Easterly wind. I went to the Office after Dr. Bigelow had been to see my boy. He inclines this morning to the opinion that he has measles. Morning taken up in Diary, Accounts and so forth. I wrote a letter to my father,1 but interruptions of one kind and another prevented it’s being as long as I meant to make it.

Walk and home where I finished the tenth book of Livy. From that to the twenty first containing the wars with Pyrrhus and the first Punic, is a hiatus valde deflendus. Livy is on the whole one of the most agreeable historians I have read—And his speeches are occasionally of far greater eloquence than the originals ever were.

Afternoon, copying my letter, after which finished Sismondi’s Account of Italian literature and read Fouqué. Evening, E. C. Adams was with us. We are anxious about little John, as well as the other children who probably will have to take their turns. Swift, four years of Queen Anne.