Heavy rain all day. Confined to the house where I worked on my papers.

I passed a bad night and arose in the morning so much indisposed as to see without regret good cause in the rain for keeping me at home. My papers kept me well employed, and in the course of the day I completed the fourth. At present they appear to me the most calm, the most statesmanlike production I have yet made, but it is impossible for me under the heat of composition ever to form such an estimate as comes near to correctness. And then what can I hope for even my best productions in opposition to the stubborn prejudices of the great mass of the people? My course is a hard and a doubtful one with nothing to sustain me but my belief of it’s truth. These papers will be laid on the shelf with all the others, yet they have not been without use in amusing and instructing me. Such occupations by ennobling the mind bring their own reward with them.