Beautiful day. Exercises as usual. Evening at the Mansion.

I devoted the hour before service to my daughter Louisa and then attended the regular exercises. Mr. F. Cunningham preached in the morning from Matthew 22. 12. “And he saith unto him, Friend how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?” An idea of Swedenborg that spirits seek after death a situation for which they are suited in order to enjoy happiness seems to have led the preacher into a train of thoughts about fitness which he left exactly as he found them. Afternoon Ecclesiastes 3. 1. “To every thing there is a season.” Trite and commonplace in the extreme.

Cunningham dined at my father’s where I joined him. Fourteen years have passed since we graduated together at Cambridge. He the prominent and the promising, I, the indolent and the dissipated. Time has been cold to him since and placed him very far below me in the world’s estimation. He has moreover been unfortunate in his domestic relations by marrying a woman marked for early but lingering death, and without children, whereas I have been fortunate. There is a moral in this which I hope I may take to heart. I trust I am not ungrateful for all my blessings, and it is not in a spirit of improper pride that I read this lesson of human vicissitude. But the greatest disappointment in Cunningham is in the extreme mediocrity of his performances, which show a want of something more than the gifts of external fortune.1

Read a Sermon by the Revd. J. Holland upon charity. 1 Corinthians 13. 1. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” A judicious discourse upon this ancient subject. Mr. Price Greenleaf called for half an hour after which we went to the Mansion.