Cloudy but clearing. Office. Nickleby. Philoctetes. China. Evening at Mr. Brooks’.

My day at the Office today was full of laziness. This I took out of pure revenge for my work on preceding days and more particularly yesterday. Read part of the Novel of Nickleby which is much after the style of all other of the works of that writer, highly unnatural, and overdrawn. It is the sardonic laugh at the miseries of human kind.

Continue Philoctetes. I. Hull Adams and his friend Campbell dined with me. Read a portion of an Essay upon the Chinese in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, prepared in so very slovenly a manner that I confess I wonder a little at its being ushered forth in such presence. The subject is curious.

Evening, Mrs. Adams and I to Mr. Brooks’ where were the female branches of the family. On with Burr.