Day cloudy. Time divided as usual. Evening at home.

At the Office today I was so busy in attending to business that I could not go on at all with my papers. Wrote an answer to Mr. Johnson’s letter received yesterday as also a letter to my father covering an Account current for the last Quarter.1 This with a walk up to the house in Tremont Street on a dunning expedition took much of my time.

Antigone as usual. Afternoon, indulge in reading Crevier and Gibbon. The whole history of the Roman Empire ought to be a profitable one to the thinker, but I have great doubts whether any existing gener-196ation draws much of instruction from any past one excepting in the sciences which yield palpable results and mathematics.

Evening at home. Continued my Essay upon Burr. I write easily but as usual now with me dislike what I write.